


Saving Grace

by asokatanos (Emryslin)



Category: The Mentalist
Genre: Case Fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 31,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24726082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emryslin/pseuds/asokatanos
Summary: Rubies. The blood looks like rubies. The face on the wall looks like a nightmare. (A crime brings the old SCU team back together, and another drives them apart. Set during s6. Rating for canon consistent violence. Now complete!)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 32





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Try as I might I couldn't shake this idea and it's easier to just come back and work on this when I have a craving for fic. Anyway - this is going to be a casefic, and the first couple chapters will follow some of the events of s6 with a handful of changes that will still fit reasonably into the canon episode plots. Be forewarned: this case is going to hit the team hard, and there will be angst. But I love happy endings, so we'll get there in time!
> 
> This is a spoiler for this story, but it's the kind of thing I need to know before getting into reading something, so: NO MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH.

**AUSTIN, TX, 8 MONTHS AFTER CBI DISSOLUTION**

"Agent Cho, excellent work on the Amos case."

"Thank you sir."

Dennis Abbott regarded his newest asset over his steepled fingers. Cho met his gaze steadily, expression unwavering. Abbott had had high expectations for Cho's first major case, and Cho had easily exceeded them all.

"How did you know?"

"Sir?"

"How did you know where to look for the money, Agent Cho? Not even the latest victim's partner knew about the safe."

"The painting didn't match the rest of the decor, sir."

Abbott leaned back in his seat, impressed. They taught a great many things at Quantico, but little surpassed experience and expertise.

"Your team closed every case for ten years at the CBI, didn't it?"

"Lisbon's."

"What was that?"

"It was Agent Lisbon's team, sir. We had a 100% solve rate for the last ten years. But you knew that already." Cho shifted just slightly forward in his seat, respectful but unwilling to take credit for his old boss. He thought she was treated poorly in the aftermath of things, blacklisted as she was in California.

Deliberately, but after a pause that made it seem like an afterthought, Cho added, "We owed a lot to Lisbon's leadership. And we learned a lot from Patrick Jane, too. He had a way of noticing this kind of thing."

"So he did. We're fortunate you've picked up some of his skills, then. Good work again - see you tomorrow."

Cho rose from his seat, but did not leave. "Sir. He could have caught the killer before the last two victims were killed. We didn't always know how he did it, but he had a habit spotting things before anyone else."

"He is a fugitive from the law."

"Yes sir. I don't think he ever cared too much about the law. Some of what he did bordered on entrapment, and he needed Lisbon to keep him from going over the edge. He's not really FBI regulation, probably wouldn't fit in, but those last two girls might have been alive if he'd been on the case." Having spoken more at a stretch than he usually liked to do, he nodded briefly at Abbott and turned to go.

"I'll keep that in mind, Agent Cho."

**SAN FRANCISCO, CA**

"I don't know why I thought doing our own thing would be any easier than going back into law enforcement! I think I need a break." Grace van Pelt sighed, looking away from her computer screen and rubbing her eyes. Her husband chuckled, setting his son down and leaning over to press a kiss against her temple.

"I bet it's just growing pains, babe. Like Ben when he was teething. I bet we'll have this all figured out by Maddy's first birthday."

She reached down to tickle her stepson and smiled when he released a shriek of laughter. "I hope so, Wayne. Who'd have thought starting our own company would involve so much networking and politics?"

"Didn't help that half our connections at the CBI quit law enforcement and the rest quit California. Though I can't blame them, after…"

"Yeah. I'm glad we stayed though. Feels like we're doing something to catch those bastards, even though it's slow going."

"Me too." Wayne squeezed his wife's shoulder and squinted at the screen. "What are you working on?"

"Well, the Association had to communicate some way, right? It couldn't just be 'tiger tiger' and anonymous phone calls- someone had to know whose phones to call." She tilted her head, choosing her words.

"Sure. We tried looking at phone records."

"Yeah and they were all burners. But I was wondering if maybe there was something else. I don't know why I didn't think of it before but- look." She hit a couple of keys on her keyboard and three windows popped up on her screen displaying old emails.

"Those look like CBI emails."

"They are. I made a copy of everything before the FBI shut us down. Wasn't supposed to, but... we didn't know who to trust," she added sheepishly. But her husband only grinned.

"It's so simple, I don't know why I didn't think about it before, but if you just highlight the whole thing-" she pressed another couple of keys "-look, at the end of every few lines there's a couple of symbols! They were just there in white so you couldn't see them. Unfortunately, without a list of all the possible symbols, I can't run a search or decryption. And there isn't really an obvious pattern of _which_ emails they're in, but it isn't every CBI-wide email."

"But it's a start, babe! We'll figure it out."

**OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON STATE**

"Hands where I can see them! Now!"

Perp quickly subdued, Teresa Lisbon frog marched him down to the station and left him there care of the local police chief, one she trusted implicitly.

"Caught another one I see, Lisbon. You sure I can't entice you into a job?"

"Sorry Hightower. After everything, it's nice avoiding the bureaucracy and getting paid for once."

"Don't I know it. But you're meant for more than this."

"Maybe. I'll see you around, ma'am."

After having given her sidearm to Jane and subsequently getting arrested by Abbott for aiding and abetting, obstruction, and whatever the hell else had been on Abbott's mind that day, Lisbon had also lost the job she'd sunk thirteen years of her life into. It was a difficult blow to realize that the CBI was shut down permanently, and even worse to realize that the Blake Association had wormed its way into law enforcement at nearly every level in the state of California. As the months passed and the federal investigation continued, it became obvious that the Association had far reaches and had infiltrated another eight states and counting.

The charges against her - and the rest of the team - had been dropped with a surprising lack of fuss once Abbott had managed to verify that none of them were complicit in the network and had genuinely been instrumental in exposing it in the first place. Their charges pertaining to the investigation into Jane's activities were small potatoes and otherwise impossible to pursue in the decimated arms of the California DoJ in any case.

Van Pelt and Rigsby had decided to stay in California but to move to San Francisco once they realized that Grace was expecting. Cybersecurity seemed like the obvious choice given Van Pelt's skills, and Rigsby had appreciated the flexibility of working for themselves; no silly anti-fraternization rule would get in their way again.

Lisbon and Cho had both been offered the option to enroll in the New Agent course at Quantico. They'd realized by then that while Abbott was hard nosed, he was also a good man who had been willing to pull strings to get them in. Cho had taken the opportunity, but Lisbon turned him down. After thirteen years at the SCU and ten years as the agent in charge, a lengthy new agent training course that would spit her out low in the ranks as a green agent didn't appeal. And after Craig O'Laughlin and Reed Smith, Lisbon wasn't sure she wanted to be anywhere near the FBI until they were sure to have cleaned house.

In trying to determine what to do instead, she'd considered a great many things only to have doors slammed in her face all over California. Even with the charges against her gone and her team's incredible case solve rate, she and everyone else at the CBI had effectively been blacklisted from law enforcement anywhere in the state. No one wanted anything to do with anyone from an organization that had been so thoroughly infiltrated by a criminal enterprise. For a brief, ironic moment, she even considered bounty hunting, though she quickly dismissed the idea as soon as she pictured Tommy's face if he heard.

Eventually, she found herself recruited by a private security firm up in Washington that paid well and allowed her the leeway and access to do some investigating on her own. The Blake Association might have been a federal investigation, but second to Patrick Jane, there was no one who knew Red John's case files as well as she did, and no one in the country as personally motivated to uncover the serial killer's network.

Even without access to the FBI's files, she managed to root out two members stationed in Washington by the end of the year. She left them in Chief Madeline Hightower's care with grim satisfaction, trusting her old boss to deal with them through the relevant channels. Each had been accompanied by a dossier full of evidence she'd compiled, leaving no uncertainties.

Eventually between her efforts, Van Pelt and Rigsby's, and Abbott's team's, the tide began to turn, though a handful of members fled the country upon being discovered, far from the reaches of even federal jurisdiction. Others went to ground.

Letters with no postage, destination, or return address but still smelling of ocean salt found their way into her mail, her office, and her late night dinner deliveries every few weeks. Every few months, she sent an envelope with a little cash and a note of thanks to the Barsockys, only "Pepper" written in place of her name and address.

**AUSTIN, TX 16 MONTHS AFTER CBI DISSOLUTION**

A former police officer, a former FBI agent, and a former judge walked into the Austin field office, dazed looks in their eyes. The judge asked to see Special Agent Dennis Abbott, and handed over an envelope that contained a short, unsigned letter:

_"Hey G-Man,_

_Heard you were looking for these three. Found them somewhere warm. The hypnosis will wear off on its own."_

**AUSTIN, TX 23 MONTHS AFTER CBI DISSOLUTION: PRESENT DAY**

Patrick Jane isn't sure what he's expecting, but he knows he wasn't expecting to see her, despite Cho's parting chuckle. But he knows it's her the instant he opens the door, and there's no stopping the smile bursting across his face as he calls out to get her to turn around.

As he's cataloguing the changes two years have brought, his arms lift as if on their own accord, wanting to hug her immediately. He wonders what she's been told, how she'd been convinced to make the trip to Austin.

She's wearing makeup that he's unused to seeing on her and her hair is longer - she is as lovely as he remembers. But she isn't dressed like an agent, and she isn't dressed for a job interview. Her clothes are new, nicer and more feminine than what she used to wear, but not drastically different. He decides that her job must be paying well, but it isn't her whole life like the CBI was. She'd never really made the time for much shopping, before.

"Nice beard," she says, amused, clearly cataloguing the changes herself. She bites her lip for a brief second and leans closer towards him as she thanks him for the letters, and her sincerity shines. He can tell she really loved them, her face as honest and as dear as ever.

"Oh, I missed you." Neither can stand any further small talk and she tucks her face into his shoulder as he holds her tight, her jacket soft under his fingers.

"I missed you too."

They sway a moment, and he tightens his grip, feeling a rush of emotion that he doesn't know how to place.

"What's going on, huh? Why am I here?"

"You'll see! It's gonna be great," he assures automatically. Another look at her jacket tells him that she'd bought it for herself; there's no one newly significant in her life. Concluding that quitting the job and quitting Washington will be no difficult heartbreak for her, he adds, "Trust me."

He's rewarded with the same exasperated expression she always wears when he says that, and he finds himself feeling warm amusement at her predictability and familiarity. The game between them hasn't changed. Even as the door opens again and Abbott walks in, he's unable to look away from her as he realizes just how true the words in his last letter were. Leaving California had been easy. Leaving the CBI had been just fine. But her absence for the last two years had been awful, strange and sad. He hopes they never have to make a habit of it ever again.

* * *

She is off balance the moment she sees him. She isn't sure what she expected, but is surprised anyway to find that he doesn't look the same as he did when he left. She knows Patrick Jane. She's spent an absurd amount of time in the last two years missing him, and he has spent the better part of ten years as her friend and shadow. She knows him.

But the man clearly struggling to take his eyes off of her even as the FBI threaten him is throwing her off balance. She doesn't know what to make of his longer hair or the way his skin still seems to glow with sunlight even under the harsh fluorescents in the building or (especially) the beard that somehow nonsensically makes him look younger. He isn't wearing his usual three piece suit (the vest is nowhere to be seen), has left off at least two of the buttons on his odd printed shirt, and doesn't seem to be wearing any socks at all.

His scuffed brown shoes are familiar.

But he keeps shifting his attention to stare at her, and that is distinctly not.

She has the sudden lurching recollection of him turning the intensity of his gaze like this on women they've encountered on cases, sizing them up as marks. He'd even subtly changed his appearance to suit his cons, adding a hat or losing his suit jacket and rolling his sleeves. In Vegas he'd even grown out his hair.

She allows her gaze to flicker back to him. He's still watching her.

She feels off balance but she will not allow him to make a mark of her, and determines to keep his manipulations at arms length even as she aches to hug him again.

He immediately gratifies her suspicions, glibly announcing "Lisbon _has_ to work with me."

Not so fast, Patrick Jane. "Hey, hello! I have a job, okay? I'm not going to drop everything just because you suddenly decided to come back!"

Abbott steamrollers over whatever Jane wants to say, and she watches in growing horror as Abbott drops his ultimatum. She watches Jane study the agent for a moment, knowing that he'd never really expected his napkin to constitute a deal. Surely, he'd just made some insane offer, expecting a counteroffer that would match what he really wanted. But that meant she was brought along as a bargaining tool, nothing more. Her irritation rises.

Apparently seeing something reassuring in Abbott, Jane refuses to capitulate, confidently tucking his napkin back into his jacket. She wants to shake him. The charges against him are serious; parole and a job are barely even enough to consider a slap on the wrist - what more could he possibly want?

The rest of the conversation devolves with the arrival of a new agent - one that Jane evidently knows, somehow - and talks of a detention suite. Her frustration grows. She hates being in over her head. Usually it's just Jane running circles around everyone else while she is never more than a step or two behind, but now it seems that she's landed in the middle of some game the three of them are playing, and she doesn't know the rules.

Jane winks at her. "Don't worry Lisbon, it's all under control." He leans back in his chair, cool as a cucumber, presenting himself for arrest. She wants to punch him. And then she wants to hide him away from these people - for his sake, and theirs. And maybe her own, too.

He disappears into detention, and she heads back to Olympia.

It takes three months before Agent Fischer interrupts Lisbon's lunch, and she knows immediately that Jane has spent three months refusing to give in. She recognizes Fischer's snide comments as frustration, and feels grim vindication that they've gotten nothing from denying him even the letters she's tried to send.

But when the agent informs her that they've kept him in isolation, her satisfaction immediately dissolves into anger. She knows very well that there are consequences to isolating a person; she's read the studies that came out of Guantanamo with horror and disgust. Three months is long past the legal allowance for solitary.

There's nothing else to it. She's gotta get him out of there.

**SOMEWHERE OVER THE MIDWEST**

Teresa Lisbon is so, so tired. She's furious with herself; after his soliloquizing about how he thought they were both equally trapped, she'd really hoped that Jane would see that she was on his side. Lisbon and Jane facing all the rest - that had been one of the few saving graces of those last dark months at the CBI. But she'd been foolish to think he'd be letting her in on his plans. Certainly not now while he was busy manipulating Fischer and Abbott and the whole FBI - why had she expected he'd spare a thought to let her in?

It's exhausting, caring about Patrick Jane. She refused to meet his eye in the bullpen, but doesn't miss that Fischer contrives to seat them next to each other on the cramped flight back to New York, apparently hoping she can talk him into giving in.

"SkyMall," he says, like it's a peace offering.

She doesn't accept it. "You ran away again, Jane. Not from the FBI. You ran away from me. I thought you were gone again - forever."

He apologizes, and she knows there's sincerity to it, but then he puts his foot in his mouth and reminds her that he will only work for the FBI if they make her a job offer. Maybe he doesn't know she'd turned them down before, but she won't let him off so easily. Maybe there really had been no good time to tell her what he was up to, not with the FBI haranguing him, but she refuses to be a pawn in whatever game they're all playing around her.

"What makes you think I want to work with the FBI? And what makes you think I want to work with you again? You are difficult, and exhausting, and- maybe I don't want to put the rest of my life on hold to be your sidekick. You think you know what's good for my life, but you haven't been part of my life for two years."

He looks well and truly taken aback and more than a little contrite, and wisely doesn't press her any further.

Of course, she forgives him as soon as he tells Defiance Schneiderman her husband is alive. He smiles as he makes the connection, eyes dancing in excitement at having solved the case. He doesn't let them all in on the big secret, naturally, waiting for the dramatic bust as he does. But she's figured it out too, and offers to stay behind so he can properly dazzle the feds. He tosses her a pleased look as he files out into the hallway behind Fischer, happy she got there right with him. It feels just a little like the old days.

She'd forgotten how much fun this could be. The last two years had been just fine, but there really was no substitute. Maybe one day she'll regret always forgiving him, but he's come to mean so much to her over the years that she knows she will forgive him nearly anything.

Abbott offers her the job, and when she accepts, he allows her to be the one to free Jane. She pats the socks she's tucked into her bag before opening the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to google, a town called Cannon River doesn't seem to exist, though it is in fact a real (tiny) body of water. I put Lisbon in Olympia and changed her job because a) she deserves to work in a real place and b) while she was clearly an excellent Chief per the show, I wanted her to have a familiar face in town and I wanted to set up a slightly... disillusioned~ Lisbon. I also wanted to make it easier for her to up and quit Washington when the time came. Hard to do that when she respected the job she had, even if it was a little boring.
> 
> Also - the new agent training course is only 20 weeks long. I can't get over that. Five months. These days it takes longer to get a passport renewed. Anyway that's why Cho's well ensconced in Austin (and not a greenie) by the time two years pass. The show's version has him finishing training only five months before Jane's return, but there's no way he'd be as well established and respected as an agent so soon after finishing up. Definitely not so well established that he gets to take over as SAC in s7 era!
> 
> Thank you for bearing with the long prologue! I have the next three chapters done, but will space out posting them so there won't be an enormous gap until the next.


	2. A Detective I Can Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter the events of White Lines (6x11) and Golden Hammer (6x12).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long author's note, skip ahead if you need to. First: I really was going to wait until next week to post this but I have the next five chapters done and figured I'd go ahead; hope you enjoy! This and the next chapter cover ground already covered on the show with changes. Some cases get more attention than others, where relevant. I do need to lay some character groundwork, so we're doing a barebones retelling, but it won't be long. I admit I had fun changing the narrating voice slightly as we visit each character. This show is such a delightful sandbox to play in!
> 
> Second: Someone made a note about Lisbon's interim job: I actually have a few reasons for changing it aside from what I already mentioned. One is that Chief of Police is an appointed position in many areas of the country (and sheriff is often elected); Lisbon is from California and Illinois, so I don't see her having the connections to convince local leadership in Washington to appoint her, especially given that her last workplace collapsed under the weight of crooked cops. Private sector is less likely to have qualms about it, and at the same time she doesn't need to worry that she might be surrounded by BA members either, which is the main reason I have her turn down the FBI early on.
> 
> The most important reason is the real life reason; I made mention of this in my a/n for the first fic I posted and in my profile, but it's still true. It did not feel right to write about Lisbon as heroic local police, because even though all of this is fiction, it's undeniable that the things we see in fiction and in media affect our daily lives. As an American I don't really want to contribute to copaganda, not at a time when things are so fraught in my country (like they have been since oh, 1492). Not when the NYPD police unions have so much power that they doxx the mayor's daughter and the mayor turns around and grants them more because he is so afraid. Not when racism is so systemic and fixed in the American legal and justice system that even "good cops" who follow the law to the letter are still perpetrating systemic violence against black people and communities. The FBI is equally if not more complicit (take a moment to read about J Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO if this statement is surprising). So I've been struggling a lot with all this, and there's no point pretending it doesn't affect any writing I might do. However, fiction is an important way to release stress in a creative and productive way, something which I find helps my mental health. I'm a woman of color but I'm not black, so I have the luxury of distancing myself from reality and hiding behind fiction if I want. I recognize that privilege. But I don't really want to hide everything, so logical, story-driven reasons aside, I chose to have Lisbon work in the private sector, and will probably use Jane's POV for scenes involving guns if I need to write any. I am not making a point about police anywhere else in the world, nor am I really making a point about individual officers. Thank you for bearing with me. If I have any black readers - I'm with you. I'm saying their names out here in the real world.

**CORPUS CHRISTI, TX**

Lisbon and Jane don't see much of each other on their next case. Agent Fischer seems to feel deeply guilty about having deceived Jane (though strangely less guilty about the less than legal isolation) and has attempted to take him under her wing to make amends. Lisbon feels a little amused to recognize the situation; Jane plays pity like a fiddle - it's how he got himself on her team in the first place, looking like a kicked puppy. Fischer reminds her a bit of herself, which was probably the point. But it takes her only one look at the two of them to know that no matter how casual Kim Fischer appeared on the island, Jane would have clocked has as a cop immediately. In all likelihood, there had never really been any deception.

Unlike Fischer though, Lisbon has had years of experience around Jane. So when she spots him smiling like the sun as he calls Krystal Markham, she knows immediately that he's plotting.

She finds the evidence.

He finds himself in the crosshairs.

(As usual.)

She makes sure he's okay, but allows Fischer the satisfaction of telling him off as he drips Gulf water under his blanket.

It's not the partnership they had before, not with so many new players, but she's happy to let someone else clean up after him. She leaves him to shiver as she walks away, but cranks up the heat without a word after he levers himself up into the SUV.

**AUSTIN, TX**

Jane watches intently as the briefing proceeds. So far, nothing particularly exciting; a man crashes his car and runs into his place of work dressed only in underwear and security badge. He saw weirder during his eight hours of freedom in Brooklyn.

The man subsequently dies, which is sad, but bears the obvious question: what is so interesting about this that the FBI is called in?

Lisbon catches his drift and asks the good questions.

He is distracted from them as a leathery, sour faced suit stomps into the bullpen and towards the conference room. Ill fitted suit on an older man whose face bears sun damage, clearly a senior desk agent with field experience. The man raps on the door with his pen and then continues to fidget with it even as he speaks with Kim. Ah, a reluctant pencil pusher, but used to getting his way. Probably forced into desk work due to an injury, turned his frustrations into maliciously enforcing rules. Agitated, definitely unhappy with the presence of a consultant.

He sees the man clearly form the words "security clearance" and then the man's eyes flick towards him. Kim's shoulders raise and her chin tilts as she responds, placating but not stepping down. Interesting. They've done Federal Reserve and DEA now without issue, so the victim must work for Defense. Probably Pentagon.

He explains to Lisbon when she asks what he's doing, but is distracted when she rolls her eyes and sarcastically calls him boss. The accusation in her voice surprises him, and he turns to her.

"But we're equals. Partners!"

"Okay, fine! Just remember that."

He's bothered by the hurt he hears in her voice under the irritation and jumps to reassure her. "I will remember that! I- I will." He wants to say more, but Kim and the pencil pusher are back in the room and he's missed whatever decision they've come to.

It's almost satisfying to rile the man up.

Definitely satisfying when Abbott shuts down the resulting angry tirade with his usual efficiency. Now granted clearance, he takes a moment to ask about Area 51, excited, but expects the blank stare he receives in return.

He, Lisbon, and Kim make their way to the victim's apartment, where they meet the brother. The brother is dressed in a sharp double-breasted suit cut from fine wool, upright but not rigid posture practically screaming money. He looks put-upon, as if his dead brother was nothing but a waste of his very precious time. Not guilty, and thoroughly uninteresting.

The apartment, however, is interesting. Modern, but mismatched. Expensive, ugly pop art and comic book style posters on the walls. Fancy video game console under the television, empty food cartons on most of the flat surfaces. High tech computer system on a cluttered desk. No softening touches - the kid must have been a perpetual bachelor, happy to live on his own as he probably did in college. A glance under a nearly full pizza box reveals the gem: a single faded and stained FINANCIAL RECORD from last Friday. No other newspapers in sight.

He barely hides his excitement as he dispatches with the brother, and leaves the workplace questioning in Lisbon's - and Kim's - capable hands.

He suspects Cho will love this, avid reader as he is.

Cho teases him about knowing the Latin for "bench," hint of a smile, and he knows he was right. Cho loves this.

Later, Lisbon shows up with evidence as she always does, and they both find delight in having reached the same conclusion by their own methods. He still takes the time to be maddeningly superior about it for Fischer's benefit, knowing Lisbon will see right through him.

But then she says she has a date, and he's derailed from his teasing.

"Uh, I'm sorry, y-you said, uh, "date," and then the subject changed," he presses. She's smiling widely, and he isn't sure why he's suddenly lost his sure-footedness around her.

* * *

Lisbon is surprised by Ardiles' call. He'd gone into the private sector like she had, though she'd been a detective on retainer and he has a high profile as a private lawyer in San Francisco.

Despite his private jet and the nice restaurant he picks, she's glad she left the private sector and its corporate dramatics behind. The extra money was nice, but not worth the loneliness of not having a team. She wonders what business he could possibly have and why he's called her so many years after they'd last spoken. The man had always been frustrated with their team (okay, almost all of that frustration was leveled at Jane) but he'd been the one handling most of their cases during their later years at the CBI.

She takes a moment to enjoy Jane's confusion and is smiling with satisfaction even as she admits that the dinner is just business.

Osvaldo Ardiles is more nervous and shifty than she's ever seen him. He's a man with straight edges and by the book thinking that had only just barely expanded to cover their old team's out of the box tactics. So his wavering voice and the way he keeps looking around him worry her; he wouldn't just make up a story like this.

He leans forward, voice low and beseeching as he says "I need the advice of a detective that I can trust 100%."

She remembers how much of a gift it had been to find Madeline Hightower back in Washington, and how happy she was to have someone she trusted nearby. Though his story seems far fetched, she immediately decides to help. She directs him to Van Pelt and Rigsby, and then cheers him with alcohol.

She relates the story to Jane the next day as they sit close together on a bench and wait for a spy, and is surprised when he suggests that Ardiles might have really wanted a date. Something about the thought makes her feel uncomfortable, made worse when he says offhand, "Ardiles, he always had a crush on you."

He's looking intently at her as he says it, and she wrenches her gaze from his to clasp his wrist and uses his watch to check the time. The excuse of caffeine is enough to flee for the moment, but she is irritated with herself even as she stands in line for her coffee. Since when does she let Patrick Jane make her uncomfortable?

She grumbles to herself for a bit and then takes a soothing sip. Which is, of course, when he decides to cause a stir. Leave the man alone for thirty seconds!

By the time she's paid her bill and made her way back, a man is in cuffs and Jane is smiling like the sun.

She has a sneaking suspicion about the person responsible at Cartesian, and is glad she'd been there to lay the groundwork earlier even as Jane had been playing at cryptography. She drops the right words in the right ears on her second trip to the company and waits to watch the cards fall.

Jane practically radiates satisfaction as he sits next to her in the park again. "Mm," he hums. "This is like a stakeout of old. You- skeptical and grumpy, me confident, cheerful."

She plays his game, falling into their old bickering. Rolling her eyes behind her sunglasses, she points out, "you're only being cheerful to irritate me."

He's unruffled. "I'm only cheerful because I get to sit here with you, in this park on such a lovely day-"

The rest of his commentary is lost as she spots the CEO's secretary striding into the park. The takedown is satisfying to watch, and she allows Jane to tease her about her people skills. She smacks his shoulder lightly, and there's a small smile on his face as he tells her she looks great in the hat.

She refuses to tell him how good he looks. He doesn't need the ego boost.

**SAN FRANCISCO, CA TWO DAYS LATER**

Wayne Rigsby had been glad to hear from his former boss, but was surprised to hear that the former ADA would be stopping by. That Teresa Lisbon had inspired such confidence is expected, but the plot she describes sounds downright ridiculous. He hopes for Osvaldo's sake that it comes to nothing.

They invite Ardiles to their home as a courtesy, but the man's nervousness spooks them all, even Maddy, who cries restlessly as if she can feel the tension. He picks up his daughter to soothe her, bouncing her a little as she likes.

Grace attempts to reassure the man by praising his foresight about buying a burner, but Ardiles remains agitated, pontificating in a way that excites the baby again, and Wayne puts his foot down.

"Look, we can't wage war on whoever bugged your phone - _if_ you were bugged. That's just not a service that we provide."

"But we'll start by looking into your phone, and as soon as we know anything, you'll know." Grace smiles her sweet "everything will be okay" smile.

Ardiles calms, but looks each of them in the eye before he admits, "Look, I'm scared. And I want this fixed."

After he leaves, they look at each other, eyebrows raised. "Like Lisbon said, he seemed a little… out there," Grace begins. "I hope he's not in danger, or anything, but… this could be a big case for us, and we can help an old colleague. It'd be too bad if it were just a faulty phone and paranoia."

It isn't. Ardiles disappears by the end of the week.

Grace tracks him to an abandoned building, and they're horrorstruck to realize that his was not the only bugged phone. The remaining five bugs are on their old team.

Wayne finds Osvaldo Ardiles' body tied to a chair.


	3. Patrick Jane: 2, FBI: 0

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lisbon's day ends as it began - a phone call from an old friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just finished writing up the tenth installment (my favorite so far) before I post this and I have to say it's been a genuine joy to rediscover just how much I like writing. I spent a lot of my teenage years thinking I'd do something with it even if I didn't make a career of it, but it never really happened and I sort of lost interest. I've written a few short things here and there in the past few years, but nothing like this! It feels a little like coming home to who I was or maybe who I was always supposed to be. I might not be the most popular or the most talented or the most well established writer, but thank you for anyone who takes a chance and reads all of this. Your support means a lot. Oh! And since I've written pretty far ahead I'm gonna go ahead and post every two or three days instead of once or twice a week like I'd planned.

**CIUDAD JUÁREZ, MEXICO**

Jane sips his tea contentedly, waiting for his companions in the warm sunshine. He's thrilled that he arrived before they did, proving without a doubt that his Airstream had been an excellent choice. It certainly beats flying, and has the added benefit of reminding him of the childhood days he spent safely ensconced in Pete Barsocky's old trailer while hiding from his father. It definitely feels more like home than his motel room in Sacramento ever did.

But Lisbon doesn't clamber out of the beat up rental car with Kim and Cho, and his happy little bubble bursts. He wonders if she's avoiding him or if the FBI is deliberately keeping them apart. The thought irritates him, so he speeds through wrapping things up, immediately directing their attention to what's interesting about the victim. Hippie clothing, but well groomed and conservative nails and hair - the federal attorney had clearly been undercover before she was killed.

Kim voices her doubt, and he takes the opportunity to remind her that solving this "does require paying attention to some of the details." He looks at her pointedly as he adds, "everyone betrays truths about themselves." It's a little bit of a low blow, but he's still a little annoyed by the fact that she'd refused him his favorite brand of tea during the unnecessarily long isolation. Having to endure three months of bargain brand swill is enough for anyone to form a grudge, really.

He does earn Cho's unrestrained delight when he presents the jumping beans _and_ gets Delgado's recommendation for the best tamales in Juarez, so the trip isn't totally uninspiring. Then a suspicious door that opens the wrong way leads him to Gentry, Texas, and things finally get interesting.

Lisbon is at the office back in Austin, clearly drowning herself in work in a misguided and unnecessary attempt to prove her worth to the FBI. He really wants to get back to working cases with her, and immediately offers her the chance for a two person road trip to investigate the farmer's market, but she refuses. And insults his Airstream.

He grumbles a bit for Lisbon's benefit about having to take Fischer instead, but Lisbon doesn't crack a smile, and he realizes that she has far too much on her plate. Her attention is still on whoever bugged their phones and killed Ardiles, and he feels a little guilty for not having been more helpful with it. He suggests that she try to get the case from SFPD - maybe he can help shake something loose.

**GENTRY, TX**

Kim's "cop-ness" is out in full force that day, and Jane reclines merrily in the Airstream as she marches purposefully into town and immediately scares everyone she talks to. He smirks, watching as one by one the townspeople retreat, distrustful. Normally, he doesn't think much of such concepts as "tact," but he is certainly well aware of how to read a room - or town, as it were - and observes as the news races through the market much faster than the woman.

Lisbon has the same quality, but something in the past two years has changed some of her demeanor and softened some of her edges. Probably the private sector work, he muses. Though really, she's still the same funny, _prickly_ woman he's called friend for years. It's still fun to annoy her, though he can't help but feel that he has hardly spent time with her since their case in New York. He'd never expected to continue missing her after coming back from the island, but he does.

Kim returns eventually, announcing that she'd been able to confirm Firlock's presence in town, and adds that a man remembered handing the undercover attorney a sample of peanut butter. Jane waits for a beat, then two. She doesn't pick up the obvious, so he adds, "why would she do that?"

She makes the connection. Edith Firlock's body had been identified by the presence of a medical bracelet warning of her severe peanut allergy.

"My turn!" he sings, and strolls into town.

**AUSTIN, TX**

Lisbon arrives early at the bullpen the next morning and is concerned when she does not find Jane sleeping on his couch. His glowing eyesore of a trailer had not been parked outside, and she knew that neither it nor its erstwhile owner had turned up the night before. She sits down at her desk with a sigh, and her phone rings immediately. Jane.

"You ever coming back?" she asks, and prays that he doesn't hear that the question is sincere. She hates that she fears this so much, wants to trust that he'll stop leaving, stop running away from her. (At least this time he'd asked her to come along.) His voice floats through the phone, and he tells her he has no lead but that he has a plan.

Jane wants a tank.

 _Whatever. Not my headache!_ Tucking that happy thought away, she makes her way to Abbott's office to pass on the message, stopping shy of the door when she hears raised voices.

She doesn't make a habit of eavesdropping, but she hears Agent Fischer ranting none too softly about Jane. Lisbon bites back a smile, having been on the receiving end of his ditch and run schemes in the past, and is a little glad she hadn't gone to Gentry with him. Who knows, she'd probably have been the one left stuck standing there. Poor Fischer.

Then she hears Abbott defend him, eagerly talking about some toy Jane had given him as a gift, and she rolls her eyes. Gift giving is one of Jane's oldest and most successful tricks and partially how he'd won her and the rest of the team over in the early days. He's like an old dog.

Fischer is now complaining that Jane has refused to answer any calls or texts, and Lisbon strides forward, wanting to put the other agent out of her misery. She's sympathetic, she is, but can't help but blurt out, "I just got off the phone with Jane," before outlining his requests. (Including the tank.) She's proud that she manages to keep a straight face even as Abbott gapes.

Jane shows up back in Austin a few hours later, and she catches him dressed in _denim_ before he ducks into a bathroom to change. He looks distressingly rugged and handsome, and she distracts herself from that thought by watching the interrogation. Ten minutes later, Firlock's killer confesses everything to Abbott, who barely had to ask any questions at all.

On her way out for the evening, she walks past the conference room (it still feels like a fishbowl) and watches as Agent Fischer unwraps a bejeweled wand, sees the wonder in the other woman's face as she gives it a wave. Lisbon smiles, wry. Patrick Jane: 2, FBI: 0. She wonders if he knows she still has the paper frog he'd left at her desk all those years ago, tucked away in a rosewood box along with his letters.

Her day ends as it began - a phone call from an old friend.

**SAN FRANCISCO, CA**

There have been no answers from SFPD and Wayne Rigsby begins to worry. They'd been relatively happy for the past two years despite the very real struggles of private work, but now he's missing the CBI extra hard; back in the day they'd have already wrangled the case to pursue on their own. Now all they can do as civilians is wait around as SFPD seems to sit on their hands. And hope that whoever killed Ardiles doesn't set their sights on the rest of the team, or worse, on their little family.

"You're such a worrier," Grace tells him, teasing, but her hands are free and she reaches for her phone to call Lisbon.

Lisbon picks up immediately despite the fact that it's late in Austin, and he hears his old boss' voice through the phone's speaker - she sounds a little tired - as the two women speak. He busies himself with Maddy, making sure her bottle is in the warmer before he peers at the drops they're supposed to put in her ear.

Grace follows him into the kitchen a couple of minutes later and tells him that Lisbon managed to get the case assigned to the FBI. "SFPD had no leads, but they think whoever shot him is probably someone from our CBI days - maybe someone we arrested. Abbott's team took all our files two years ago, so they should be able to go through them over there between cases. She said she'll keep up posted."

She comes close to press a kiss into his cheek before taking the baby from his arms. "Go get Maddy's bath started, I'll give her her drops and be right up."

The bathtub is nearly full enough when he hears her shout from downstairs followed by the loud burst of a gun shot. He grabs his sidearm and rushes down as quietly as he can, hoping to surprise the intruder. He spots the figure as he reaches the landing and manages one shot into the attacker's shoulder before they return fire and he has to duck behind a wall. When he turns to look back again, all he can see is the open side door. He hears the sound of an engine starting and a car peeling away, but he can't give chase when he doesn't know if Grace or Maddy has been hurt.

He spots the hole in the pantry door and feels sick. "Grace! Grace! It's clear. Are you okay? Is she hurt? Is Maddy okay?"

Grace emerges from the pantry cradling the baby, both unharmed but shaken. He pulls them both close as the adrenaline slowly wears off.

They're on the next flight to Austin.

**AUSTIN, TX**

Grace Van Pelt can't shake her worry. This is the first time they've left the baby behind - she's with a trusted aunt back in California, but every time she closes her eyes she can see the inside of the pantry covered in shrapnel and the bullet lodged in the far wall.

Lisbon tries to reassure her, and she appreciates the effort, but it isn't enough. Still, it's something to see Cho leading the briefing, collected as always. She missed him. He pulls up a list of twelve likely suspects connected to cases they'd worked in the past and assigns each to a different agent before dismissing the group, and she's surprised and happy to watch them all accept orders without question and get right to work. He's just finishing greeting her and Wayne when Jane strolls up from behind them and blithely announces that this way will never work.

She wants to be annoyed with him, but then he continues: "We're the ones that caught them and arrested them and questioned them and we certainly know them better than any database."

He's right, as usual. The familiarity of the situation is somehow comforting, and she takes a breath for the first time in hours. Their team always caught their perps.

At Jane's encouragement, their team narrows Cho's list of twelve down to John Hutten, Tommy Volker, Donny Culpepper, Richard Haibach, and Linus Wagner, leaving the rest to be investigated by the others. They start to go their respective ways and Jane barely manages to sit on his couch - she thinks it looks suspiciously like the one he'd had at the CBI - when another agent drops a case in his lap and co-opts him for the rest of the day.

* * *

**BRADLEY, TX**

No rest for the wicked. Kim accosts him for another case before he even manages to finish his tea. He'd been looking forward to hanging around with the old team like the old days, but there's no way he'd be able to convince either Kim or Abbott that he's needed to look at old case files. He hasn't been with the FBI long, but they are all well aware that he does not do paperwork; and so he finds himself in the FBI regulation SUV headed to Bradley with Kim driving as she briefs him.

He doesn't hide his impatience, but he tempers his irritation. He's just managed to win her over with a well timed gift, and it won't do to ruin the good faith just yet.

He makes short work of identifying the leader of the workmen down at the frack site. The man blathers some party line about community enrichment before spinning a tale about violent anti-corporate hacktivists, but the idea of an anti-corporate group murdering an anti-fracking activist makes little sense. By the time they're ready to speak with the victim's wife, he is in sore need of another cup of tea, and makes his way to the kitchen at earliest opportunity.

He's waylaid in his tea making by the wife in question, and she tells him about Danny Becker and his work and his lawsuit before taking a lighter to the faucet. He's thoroughly startled when the water bursts into flame and quickly sets down the kettle, convinced by the demonstration.

No tea then.

The hacktivists' video is interesting though. The unsettling "London Bridge" music gets stuck in his head for the rest of the day. Could be useful.

**AUSTIN, TX**

Their investigation is not going well. Hutten makes fools of Cho and Rigsby who had left together in the morning with the excited air of a reunited partnership and returned with glumness clouding over their heads. Linus Wagner turns out to have been incarcerated and in solitary for the week preceding and during Ardiles' murder. Volker too is in prison, hidden away in a federal lockup with no promising communications for the past six months. Donny Culpepper seems to have kept his nose clean (well, after he cleaned off the blood Lisbon drew when she punched him, anyway), and has an alibi for the time of the murder.

Lisbon is beginning to wonder if they have the real perp on their shortlist at all when Abbott ominously calls her to his office, and she struggles not to feel like a guilty child called into the Principal's. Haibach's lawyer makes accusations before she even sits down.

Apparently, he'd been in Denver on a job with coworkers at the time of the murders and is furious with what he's perceived as police harassment and a threat to his employment. He's still creepy and off putting, but after being tortured by Kirkland and continuously regarded with suspicion by the locals, he had been run out of town over a year earlier and was now living somewhere in Minnesota. When his lawyer leaves, Abbott offers to put a surveillance team on Haibach after 24 hours, but Lisbon's instincts tell her the man just wants to be left alone and she shakes her head. He's probably guilty of being a peeping tom at the very least, if not something much worse, but he doesn't have anything to do with Ardiles' murder; putting a tail on him without any evidence would be a waste of police resources, not to mention a serious abuse of power.

While their own case stalls, Grace helps Wylie make a breakthrough on Jane's, and he and Fischer track the hacker down in short order. Lisbon wonders if Fischer pokes fun at him when they're at St Patrick's University Library, but suspects that the two will never be friendly enough for that kind of banter, not with Fischer's continued guilt about whatever happened when they first met.

A few hours and a _very_ questionable Jane scheme later, they catch two criminals for the price of one. She notices that Abbott doesn't mention the illegality of the search Jane had Wylie do.

The next day, Rigsby follows a hunch and they discover that Donny Culpepper's alibi is less than airtight and that his whereabouts were not fully accounted for. Initially, he'd claimed to have been at a bar that night, and the bartender had vouched for him. But upon further questioning, the bartender admitted that there was maybe an hour during the evening rush when he couldn't be sure if Donny had been around. Lisbon calls SacPD and asks them to check on his last known address in Sacramento while Van Pelt executes a warrant and traces his financials.

SacPD finds his apartment empty, blood in the bathroom - probably from the wound Rigsby had inflicted.

A stroke of luck for Grace: she finds a purchase record for plane tickets to Texas the day after the attempt on her and Rigsby. Lisbon guesses day's delay must have been enough for Culpepper to find someone to patch up his shoulder.

A few calls and a little computer work reveal that Culpepper's ex-wife has a townhouse outside of San Antonio.

He's their last remaining suspect and it's a solid lead, so the team perks up, excited to have something to follow. Cho and Rigsby drive out and make short work of arresting Culpepper for the murder of Osvaldo Ardiles and the attempt on Van Pelt, and they even find nearly $50,000 in cash in a ziplock bag hastily tossed into the entryway closet. It's well past the end of the workday, and they decide to toss him into holding once they get back to Austin, let him stew overnight before they try to figure out why he'd done it.

Jane cheerily announces that he has a rapport with the man from prior experience and guarantees that he'll get a motive and a confession out of him in the morning.

The boys head out for a drink, but Lisbon leaves them to it, opting to drive an exhausted but relieved Van Pelt back to the motel instead before catching an early night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know JJ LaRoche reappeared and died horribly in Black Helicopters - I wrote the relevant scenes, but it wasn't necessary so I've left him out. He's still alive somewhere and enjoying his drama-free life with his lil dog and his Tupperware. In all likelihood he'll never repay Jane's favor! Haibach and his sister are also going to stay in the past. Also I strongly considered making Volker the big bad of this story because he's just such an excellent villain (and the show missed an opportunity to bring him back!) but the details won't work for my purposes, so he gets to just chill in prison. Lucky him!
> 
> All of which to say: we are firmly in AU territory now!


	4. A Price Above Rubies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys get a drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double chapter today! Uh, I don't know how to do this properly without also spoiling things, but starting here I need to issue a content warning for blood and imagery consistent with what we see on the show. It gets darker for a few chapters from here on out, but I'm putting this warning here as a catchall before anything too startling happens. I think my rating is still fine though - again, consistent with some of the darker parts of the show. Be safe.
> 
> Cho absolutely does not think they are like brother and sister. That would be absurd.

**AUSTIN, TX**

It's nice, spending time with Cho and Rigsby again. Now that they've caught Culpepper, it's easy to breathe a sigh of relief and grab a drink to celebrate. What might things have been like if he'd been able to stick around after taking down Red John?

Rigsby comes back after checking in with his wife, and he looks at peace, happy to relay her encouragement that he catch up with them.

"Smart woman," Cho remarks, and Jane can't help but agree.

"A price above rubies," he says, and lifts his drink. "To Grace."

"You know," Rigsby says, fidgeting and talking into his hands, "Grace and I, uh… oh, we always thought that you and Lisbon would… you know, get together."

Now it's Jane's turn to not meet eyes, and he hears his own voice go high as he begins to speak, so he just settles for "hmm!"

Cho smirks at him knowingly, and he suspects that the three of them have talked about this before. Cho doesn't relent. "Remember when you bought her a pony?"

That drags a smile out of him. "Yes, I do. I do remember that. I wonder what happened to it."

They share a chuckle at the memory and the bartender brings their last round. Like clockwork, Rigsby announces he's hungry, having spotted a drive-through with chimichangas on the way over.

Same old Rigsby.

They pile into Cho's SUV and track down Rigsby's chimichangas before driving to the motel to drop him off, all sated and happy after having seen each other again. As they drive up to the Rose Mountain Inn & Suites, Cho asks if Rigsby and Van Pelt have thought about coming to work at the FBI, offer straight from Abbott.

The idea of getting the team all back together is like a dream. But Rigsby's a married man and a father now, so he tempers his daydreaming by pointing out that it's a job that really requires a 24/7 commitment, difficult to handle with kids. Still, he's excited, and promises to talk to Grace. Jane smiles in the back seat, suspecting that they'll convince themselves to make the move sooner rather than later. Their team is family, and the past few days only proved it.

Cho's the first to notice the open door. The smile freezes and falls off Jane's face as they all exit the car. Even with the latest threat neutralized in a holding cell, Grace would never carelessly leave the door open like that. They run up the steps as Wayne calls her name, sinking feeling chasing them all the way.

Rubies.

The blood looks like rubies.

The face on the wall looks like a nightmare.

Grace Van Pelt is nowhere to be found.


	5. This Was Supposed to be Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Grace is missing. It... Lisbon, it looks like Red John." A breath. "Jane needs you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for another chapter to go up!
> 
> A fun fact: a fair amount of dialogue thus far is straight from the show, including the line where Jane calls Grace "a price above rubies" in the episode White as the Driven Snow. That episode shortlisted the same exact candidates that I chose for this fic, though they went with Haibach and I have not. Interestingly, the title of the episode in which Donny Culpepper first appears is none other than A Price Above Rubies. Wild.

**ROSE MOUNTAIN INN & SUITES, AUSTIN, TX**

Rigsby starts to fall to the ground as his knees give out and Cho rushes over to catch him. At first, there's only silence in the room, but then Rigsby starts to repeat his wife's name even as Cho holds him. The warmth they had all been feeling at the bar is long gone.

The face on the wall stares at them, glittering in the light. It looks fresh.

Cho looks up at Jane over Rigsby's shoulder, face tight with concern, but Jane appears frozen, rooted in his spot just inside the door. There is no expression on his face and his eyes are fixed on the blood.

They need to get the hell out of here.

Cho drags his friend up off the floor and props him up against the wall outside the room. Once the scene is out of sight, Rigsby immediately doubles over and loses his dinner, shaking. Cho pats his back as he calls Lisbon to come get Jane.

It takes her less than ten minutes, by which time Cho has managed to pull Rigsby off the ground and bundled into the passenger seat of his car, where he sits in shocked silence, trembling. In the parking lot, he takes a moment to pass Lisbon a terse nod in solidarity before they part ways. He can still see Jane standing frozen just beyond the doorway.

* * *

The call from Cho had scared her. First, he had sounded truly shaken, voice wavering in the kind of fit of emotion he was usually tremendously adept at containing. Second, the words he had said sent icy fear sparking all the way to her toes.

"Grace is missing. It... Lisbon, it looks like Red John." A breath. "Jane needs you."

This can't be happening. It isn't possible.

Lisbon breaks every speed limit between her apartment and the motel, emergency lights on and flashing. Her thoughts race nearly as fast as her vehicle, detective instincts on high alert. Donny Culpepper is still in holding, there was no way he could have done - whatever this is. They'd all missed that there was a second player, though it should have been obvious; Donny is nowhere near sophisticated enough to set up multiple phone traces. That the two are somehow connected is likely, given that he'd shot at Van Pelt not two days ago, but what about Ardiles? And dear God, Cho had said _Red John_...

She prays hard as she drives, desperately maintaining hope that Grace is still alive somewhere. Her knuckles are clenched against the steering wheel, but she doesn't dare let go to grasp at her cross. She soon screeches into the parking lot and hops out, stopping for barely a heartbeat to look in at Wayne in Cho's car (he's _not_ holding it together) and another two to meet Cho's eyes and follow his gaze up to the open motel room door.

The sight of Jane standing there as if stuck breaks her heart. Cho had said it looked like _Red John_. God, how is Jane going to survive this?

She takes the stairs two at a time, but slows at the doorway and gently calls his name before entering, unwilling to startle him. He doesn't react at all, and she suddenly isn't sure if she'd be able to startle him even if she tried.

She takes a second to assess the scene - the face on the wall grinning down like a demon, no body (thank God), but blood - too much blood - red on the rumpled sheets, signs of a struggle. Keys still on the table.

Then she turns her back on it and steps in front of Jane. He's pale, and there's sweat beading on his forehead despite the chill of the evening. His eyes are rapidly alternating between the wall and the bed, his body perfectly still except for where his left hand fidgets with his ring, turning it over and over and over.

She reaches out and catches that hand (it's freezing cold), stilling the motion, and then reaches up with her other hand to tilt his head down to look at her. She remembers the time he had done this for her when she had woken up with a bomb strapped to her chest. It feels like a lifetime ago. "Jane," she says softly. "Patrick."

His eyes finally leave the wall and drop down to her face, but his gaze is so distant she isn't sure he's seeing her at all. She doesn't need to imagine what else he's seeing instead. She squeezes his cold hand with her warm one and meets his eye directly. Calls his name again.

Finally, he blinks, takes a deep breath. "Lisbon," he says, as if just realizing she's there. Then he steps towards her, slumping down so he can hide his face against her neck as heaving, shuddering breaths overtake him.

She takes the opportunity to turn them so he is facing away from the room and holds him tight, one hand protectively resting on the back of his head like she'd hold a child. His arms hang limply at his sides.

She can't begin to imagine how he survived after seeing his wife's and daughter's bodies stretched out under the macabre calling card, and then how he continued to see crime scenes just like it for ten years after that.

She herself feels shattered. This was all supposed to be over. The CBI's closure, all the darkness, Jane's exile - _everything_ had been worth this being over. _Where the hell is Grace?_ This was supposed to be over!

Slowly, slowly, Jane's panicked shock wears off and he tentatively raises his arms to return her embrace. He takes a deep, clearing breath through his mouth and she feels the air on her clavicle.

And then he straightens up. After a moment, he nods at the cellphone sticking out of her pocket. "Forensics probably won't be able to get much, since it's a motel room. But you should still call them."

His cheeks are dry and his voice sounds as close to normal as he can probably get, and she thinks he might be the bravest man she has ever met.

He reaches down and grasps her hand like a lightning rod needing a ground, and then turns to look back at the room. He moves methodically but keeps hold of her as he walks, and his thoughts escape through his mouth unfiltered.

"Strands of hair on the carpet. Some long and red like hers. Some blonde ones over there. Dark one here. Probably just previous guests. Blinds are closed, curtains open. Must have been Rigsby, he needs a little light to be able to wake up in the morning. Here, room key and house keys still on the table. Wallet's in her purse. Her gun's probably still in there too. Main lights are off, but the bedsides are on. She was tired when we left the office, probably asleep already when Rigsby called her earlier. Phone's on the floor. Can't track her." He hesitates, then turns his attention to the bed.

His hand twitches in hers, but his voice remains steady. "Laptop's still on the bed, need to have Wylie check, see if she got any messages or if she was working on any useful leads. Dent in the pillow. She was sleeping here on this side facing away from the door. Didn't see him until it was too late." He leans over and sniffs near the pillow before pulling back quickly.

"Chloroform. She didn't get much chance to fight. Probably just landed one blow with her elbow."

He studies the blood marring the taupe motel sheets. "She was already unconscious when he cut her. No spray. He didn't hit an artery. She won't bleed out, but she's lost a lot of blood."

He turns abruptly, drops her hand, and strides out of the room, never raising his eyes to look at the wall and the face on it again.

Lisbon does, and has the vague feeling that there's something off about it, and then she turns and hurries after him. She calls in the forensics team as she heads down the stairs and waits outside her SUV until they arrive, Jane already sitting inside.

They drive back to the office in silence, but she clutches one of Jane's hands as soon as she gets into the car and drives one handed the entire way.

She parks in front of the ugly cubic field office building and turns off the engine, but does not release Jane or make any moves to get out. Cho's car is already parked nearby, and it's empty. She takes a deep breath to steel herself for the question she needs to ask.

Jane gets there first. "I'm sure."

She tilts her head towards him.

His fingers loosen in hers slightly, and then he shakes his head. "No. I'm sure. Red John is dead. Thomas McAllister is dead. This just- this just looks like him."

"A copycat?"

He lifts one shoulder in a half shrug. "Maybe. But Red John always left the bodies."

She nods once, and then lets him go to climb out of the car. She does not ask if he's okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By now you've figured out that I've given this story the dumbest possible title, but I made the mistake of using it as a placeholder when drafting and it stuck lol. What can you do! I hope Jane's behavior in this chapter doesn't feel out of character; my thought is that seeing a crime scene specifically like this after it's all supposed to be over has got to be traumatic, even if he's sure Red John is done. Right now all his walls are down and the mask is off. It will be back on as soon as he steps out of the car.


	6. Leave him to his Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The interrogation of Donny Culpepper, gun for hire.

**AUSTIN, TX**

"Fischer and Howard are at the motel taking statements, and forensics is combing through the motel room, but we've got nothing useful yet. There's about a thousand different fingerprints and DNA all over everything," Cho tells Abbott, hands up in frustration.

"I hate hotel rooms. How's Wylie doing with the surveillance footage we pulled from the front desk?"

"Nothing helpful. Camera catches Lisbon dropping Van Pelt off for the night, and then nothing. Lisbon was giving her statement to Collins when I last saw her."

"Anything else?"

Lisbon strides in holding a tablet and smoothly catches the end of their conversation. "Wylie caught a dark sedan leaving the area of the motel around the time of Grace Van Pelt's abduction." She hands it over, but the image is blurry.

"Was he able to get a license plate?"

Lisbon shakes her head. "No. Front plates were removed, and there was no camera angle from the rear. All we know is that it's a recent model sedan in a dark color."

Exactly like most of the cars in and around Austin.

Abbott makes a soft sound like a grunt, and then marches to the front of the room.

"All right, listen up people. We're treating this like one of our own, got it? We already have a suspect in custody in connection with the case, but tonight proves there's a second perp. This second person is probably behind tonight's abduction and maybe even ordered the murder of former ADA Osvaldo Ardiles. I'm calling in a dragnet of 20 miles for now. Pull out all the stops. We will find Grace Van Pelt." Abbott is commanding, alert despite the late hour, and the other agents seem to draw energy from him.

Lisbon spots Jane sitting next to Rigsby in the conference room, one hand on the younger man's shoulder. He's murmuring something, and she watches as Rigsby nods slowly, accepting the comfort being offered. She has no idea how he does it, but Jane has put himself back together and is lending some of that strength now. God knows Wayne will need it.

Jane looks up and spots her, and then wordlessly glances in the direction of the interrogation rooms before looking back at her. She nods, understanding, and sends a junior agent to collect Culpepper from holding. It's time to question him and find out what he knows.

* * *

"Donny Culpepper. I'd say I'm surprised to see you here, but you never were very good at not getting caught, were you?" Jane doesn't bother letting the man squirm, jumping straight into questioning.

Culpepper stares at him, but says nothing.

"You were always more of a thief than a gun for hire, though. What happened? Hard times?"

Slight narrowing of the eyes. So he _had_ been hired for this. Left shoulder twitches. Ah, hard times indeed.

"Oh, the divorce! She took you for everything, did she? Tell me, how long were you married? Two years? Three? Ah, that's it - three. You've been on your own for a year or two now, haven't you?"

Culpepper crosses his arms.

"Hmm. You claimed once that you were a- a 'dynamic businessman who pushed the envelope'. So what happened when you lost everything, hm? How long did it take for someone to hire you for murder?"

Culpepper is glaring now, but doesn't say a word.

Jane leans forward over the table into his space. "I pegged you as stupid the moment I met you. But not talking just proves how stupid you really are. You couldn't even handle a little robbery back in the day, and this time, you failed to kill an unarmed civilian who was never expecting you. It's amazing anyone hires you at all!"

"Who ever said anything about killing her? I didn't _fail_ to do anything."

Cho beats him to his next question, now that Jane has a foot in the door. "Who said anything about 'her'?"

Culpepper's glare melts into panic. Oopsie.

"So if you didn't fail, and you weren't there to kill her, what were you trying to do?" Cho's voice is measured, reasonable. Reaching out like a friend. _Go on, trust me._

Culpepper falls back against his seat. But he lifts his chin, knowing he's been caught out. "Look, I was only supposed to scare her. But I wasn't expecting that tall guy, and he clipped me, so I figured I'd lay low at my ex's since she's on her honeymoon somewhere."

"Hmm. Yes, we found her plane tickets. She's in Venezuela. Beautiful place. _Great_ beaches." Jane paces back to the corner of the room, never having bothered to sit.

"Who hired you to kill Osvaldo Ardiles?" Time to lay out the cards, see what he'll confess.

Culpepper's eyes follow Jane as he prowls, but Cho leans forward to recapture his attention and repeats the question. "We found the money and we know it wasn't your idea, so someone hired you. Who was it?"

"I- I don't know who he was! I never saw him! I got a call from a blocked number, and the man said he knew that someone hired me to break into that guy's house back in Sacramento a few years ago, wanted me to go after the little lawyer. He gave me fifty grand in cash upfront, said I'd get another fifty after I killed the lawyer and scared the red head. I met her once and she was a looker, so I figured it'd be easy money, maybe I'd get to have a little fun."

He fidgets under Cho's impassive gaze, then shrugs. His accent from over east starts to bleed into his voice as he grows agitated.

"Saw the lawyer leavin' her house, figured he was a friend or ex or somethin', maybe the rich guy wanted in. He even told me exactly where the lawyer was, must have had a tracker on him."

So they'd been right; Culpepper hadn't set up the phone traces, and he'd been responsible for both Ardiles' murder and the attempt on Van Pelt. Their charges would stick after all.

Cho continues to watch him steadily. "Did you know Grace Van Pelt was here in Texas tonight?"

The man shakes his head. "No. Is she? But today you were with the guy who shot me in her house, weren't you? They together or somethin'?"

"What were you supposed to do after you scared her?" Neither Cho nor Jane answer Culpepper's question.

"Nothing! Why, what happened to her?"

Cho glances up at Jane, who drops his chin in a minute nod. "She's missing."

Culpepper blanches, and then raises his cuffed hands, palms towards them. "I don't know anything about that! I was at my ex's all day and then I was here, I didn't do anything to her!"

Jane suddenly pushes off the wall, pulls a chair around the table to sit close to Culpepper. "How'd you get the cash if you never saw him?"

"What?"

"The cash. Whoever hired you paid you in cash. How?"

Culpepper looks away, gaze drifting to the floor. Jane tilts his head, and then presses. "Why are you protecting him?"

"I never saw him!" His shoulders hunch, but he drags his eyes back up to look at Jane.

"Maybe. But it is interesting that you don't want to answer the question... You're afraid. The man scared you. You think he'll kill you if you talk."

Culpepper turns to Cho, beseeching. "No, I don't know anything about him. I told you everything I know! I never saw the guy."

Jane stands abruptly and walks out. Cho follows a minute later, and they find Lisbon, Abbott, and Rigsby behind the glass in the observation room.

Rigsby seems to have regained some of his color since they first saw the motel room, but he still looks shaken. "He's in custody at the FBI and he still thinks whoever hired him can get to him if he talks."

He leaves his last thought unvoiced, but the others hear it anyway.

It feels like the days back at the CBI when Red John followers died in custody. It all feels a little too much like Red John.

The only difference is that Red John's followers all expected and welcomed it, happy to die for their cause. Donny Culpepper expects someone to come for him, but he is practically quaking in terror.

"You think you can get anything more out of him?" Abbott looks at Cho and Jane in turn.

Jane shakes his head. "No, and he's telling the truth about not having seen his employer, though he's probably still hiding something. He won't talk any more now. And he's too wound up and scared for hypnosis to work." He half turns, two fingers against his mouth as he thinks.

"Might as well leave him to his nightmares in a federal prison," he says, and walks away.

Lisbon watches him leave, and turns to Abbott. "He wants to see if whoever hired him will try to break Culpepper out."

* * *

**FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION, BASTROP, TX**

Less than twenty four hours later, Donald Culpepper will be found dead in his cell before his arraignment. A red face will gleam on the wall above him.

* * *

**AUSTIN, TX 10 MINUTES AFTER INTERROGATION**

Jane frowns into the bullpen from where he's sitting on his couch, clearly thinking hard. Lisbon has abandoned her desk, her chair pulled to the side so she can see him without turning all the way around as she works. All of them have abandoned the pretense that this is a normal case, each of them keeping an eye on the other three.

Wayne Rigsby is alone in the conference room, feeling more like victim than investigator or agent even though he still has the consultant status the FBI had granted earlier. But watching them out there, he isn't sure there's anything useful he can do at all. He's hardly sure he can do anything, at the moment. All he can think about is the fact that Grace is missing. His _wife_ is missing, and there was _a fucking face on the wall._

He doesn't know how Jane managed to live another day after seeing the face in his home in Malibu.

After a moment, he recalls what Jane had said to him in this room earlier.

_"Wayne," he'd said, sitting down next to him. "I understand how you're feeling right now. Believe me." His words had been soft, calm, almost like the voice he used when hypnotizing people._

_But his next statement held a little steel. "But you are a father, and you have children you need to see grow up. You understand me? You are not giving up right now. Besides, we don't have any reason right now to believe that Grace isn't still alive."_

_Wayne had nodded, miserable, but accepting the truth of Jane's words. He had taken a moment to gather himself, and then called Grace's aunt to check in on Maddy. Then he called to check in on his son. It nearly took everything out of him._

_"Daddy, are you coming home soon?"_

_"Not for a little while longer buddy. You're having a good time with your mom though, right?"_

_"I guess. She works a lot. Is Grace there? She reads me a story before my nap sometimes."_

_He took a shaky breath, trying to maintain his composure for Ben's sake. "No. No, she's uh, she's not here right now."_

_He smiled at his boy, but then felt the sudden rush of tears coming, and quickly moved to end the call. "I gotta go, Ben, but I'll, I'll try to come home soon. Daddy loves you, okay?"_

_"Love you too, Dad. Bye!"_

Now, unable to keep holding it together, he drops his face into his hands. The tears are still coming when he feels a warm hand on his back, and he looks up to see Lisbon standing next to him, Cho and Jane behind her. Her face is gentle, sad.

"It's late," she says. "You need to get some rest. We all do. There isn't anything else we can do right now."

He nods, but doesn't move. There's nowhere to go.

But Lisbon surprises him, answering that question. "I want you to stay at my apartment tonight. You shouldn't be alone. I'm worried about you." She turns her head, and adds, "You too, Jane. Kimball, you're welcome too. None of us are going to go through this on our own."

Jane makes protests about being just fine and there not being enough room for everyone, but she shoots him down.

Half an hour later, they're all crowded together on the floor of her living room like children at a sleepover, every single one of them deeply glad not to be alone. They're all kept awake by their monsters, but they catch snatches of sleep in the dark and the silence broken only by the hum of Lisbon's refrigerator, knowing that when this is all over they'll find a way to never be so far from each other again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it isn't clear, absolutely nothing untoward happens at the end there. Except a disregard for social distancing protocols maybe lol (there's also something weirdly healing about just sleeping crammed together like sardines with people you trust after something difficult and awful happens.)
> 
> I've been cross posting to this site but I can't tell if there's any readership here as opposed to on ffnet. I know the majority of the fandom lives there so I'm not surprised at all (it's a non-issue!) I'm just wondering if it's worth spending the time to post here too. Just gimme a shout if you're here, doesn't matter what you say. I know too that a lot of people here filter for Complete status, so maybe that's all it is. Either way I'll keep posting over there bc it's fun writing this, but yk.


	7. A New Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They figure out their first clues; meanwhile, Grace meets her assailant face to face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I received some VERY relieving personal news AND I just finished writing the last chapter earlier today and I'm posting a day early to celebrate! I'll still have to write one more to tie things up, pave away the cliffhangers, and have Grace tell the very tail end of her story, but I'm excited. This part of our plot is a little slow, but the second half of this story is more exciting, now our team has started picking up on clues. All in all there will be (I think!) 15 chapters not including the prologue. A preview though: more nightmares, a blink and you'll miss it cameo, some emotional honesty, instances of things left unsaid just like in the show, and a conspiracy theory involving a pop star. Buckle up.

**AUSTIN, TX**

A scant few hours later and first thing the next morning, Culpepper is transferred pending arraignment to the federal prison in Bastrop, just outside of Austin. Jane expects that the employer will attempt to make contact with Culpepper within a day or two, and hopes to catch him in the act. In the meantime, Abbott maintains his grip on the situation, making sure no agent loses sight of the task at hand. When a new case comes up, he sends Fischer and another agent, knowing it would be better to allow the old CBI team to focus on finding Van Pelt - and to stay together. Smart man. With Fischer gone, Cho becomes head of their investigation.

Abbott clears his throat to address them and the rest of the agents working the case.

"Listen up. We know for sure that someone hired Culpepper. See if he met anyone new recently. Maybe somebody that met him at work, somebody who found him on the internet. Maybe an old friend he reconnected with, maybe a new friend from the bar, maybe his sister. Find the employer, and do it quickly. This isn't just a bigger fish to catch, this is one of our own in danger. We don't have the luxury of time, but for now, we are keeping this _out_ of the media, understand?"

Jane announces that he needs to think, feeling that there's something he's already seen or heard or recognized that he is missing, and he sprawls on his couch.

Cho and Rigsby are knee deep in files and phone calls, Rigsby having remembered first encountering Culpepper at a bail bonds company in Sacramento. They're all well entrenched in their investigations when Lisbon sits up straight with a gasp.

"The phone taps!"

Several heads turn in her direction, but she looks excitedly at Rigsby. "Wayne, how far did Grace get in determining the source of the bugs?"

Rigsby shrugs. "I'm not sure… not very far, I think. She turned them all off but then we found Ardiles' body and Maddy got an ear infection right before Culpepper shot at them, so I don't know if she ever got the chance to dig."

"Well we know that someone was listening in on our team specifically, right? So let's not forget that this has to be connected to the CBI somehow. Whoever the employer is _has_ to be someone we know."

Jane sits up and smiles a little at her. "And what was it Culpepper said yesterday... he said that the person who hired him knew that he'd been hired before to break into LaRoche's safe. I assume _you_ didn't tell anyone I hired him, and _I_ definitely didn't, so it had to have been someone with access to our files. Someone who saw the charges get dropped because of you and made the connection." He waves his hand dismissively when it looks like Cho and Rigsby want to ask about the break in.

Cho blinks at him, but lets it go. Good old Cho. Then he summarizes, "So someone who had access at the CBI who's got skills in wiretaps and surveillance. I'll see if Wylie can continue Grace's work and source the bugs."

"This is good," Lisbon says, and Rigsby stares at her as if to ask how she can possibly call anything _good_ right now.

"It is, because it means that when Grace broke the phone hacks up after Ardiles' paranoia, she must have disrupted his plans."

Jane nods seriously and continues her thought. "Whoever it is must have realized then that it was only a matter of time before we track him down, and was forced to act outside his original timeline. This _is_ good, means he's on the wrong foot, and we just have to find the right way to push so he falls over."

They've all been avoiding the elephant in the room, but Rigsby still sees Grace's blood on the wall every time he closes his eyes, and he can't sit still on it any longer.

"Could it be Red John?" He's looking straight at Jane.

There's no accusation in Rigsby's eyes, only fear, but Jane feels it anyway. "No. I got it wrong once with Timothy Carter, but I'm absolutely sure I didn't get it wrong twice. Thomas McAllister _was_ Red John. And he's dead. I would know."

But the fact of the matter is that there had been a face drawn in blood on the wall at the motel, and even Patrick Jane doesn't know what to make of it.

Nine hours later, another bloody face appears, grinning down at Culpepper's body. The security cameras in the prison never see a thing, but prisoners in the neighboring cells say they heard a man whistling.

**UNKNOWN LOCATION, TIME INDETERMINATE**

Grace Van Pelt wakes up with a jolt into a darkness so profound she isn't even sure her eyes are open at first, and she finds herself completely disoriented. She blinks several times, but when she attempts to move her arm to wave a hand in front of her face, the rest of her body seems to wake up too, and she cries out into the silence. Her ankles are shackled in a way that chafes, and there's a sharp pain in her right arm and across her torso. She feels dizzy, but when she leans her head against a wall behind her she realizes she's also woozy in the way she's only felt on rare days when she'd been hungover. There had been a few of those days in the aftermath of shooting Craig, but hardly any in the years since. She hasn't really needed to drink herself into stupors with Wayne around to cheer her anyway.

Her head aches worse than she's ever felt. So. She'd been drugged. And probably suffering the effects of blood loss. _Shit_.

Gingerly, she lifts her uninjured arm and reaches for her abdomen, flinching when it stings at the slight pull. The cloth of her shirt is ripped, but it was a loose shirt and had ridden up and covered the wound, which feels like it is still oozing a little. She tries pulling the fabric away slowly, but parts of it have dried all together, and the movement hurts so much she can't help but cry out again. She grits her teeth as she continues to pull it free bit by bit, causing the wound to reopen a little where the blood had congealed and dried around the fabric of the shirt. Eventually, once it's free, she uses the existing rip to tear a long strip of the shirt off and ties it tightly around herself like a bandage. Luckily, wherever she is isn't cold, so that her shirt is now cropped isn't a pressing concern.

Suddenly, light floods into the room and she squeezes her eyes against it, turning her head into the narrow, dusty mattress she's laying on. Hinges creak somewhere in front of her, and after a second, she tries squinting in an attempt to see.

"Ah, finally awake I see!"

She recognizes the voice before her eyes adjust enough to see him, and a feeling like ice settles on her. It's like hearing a ghost.

"Where am I? What do you want from me?" she hasn't lived through everything she has to go into whatever this is quietly.

The man ignores her questions but paces closer and his body blots out some of the light from the open doorway. But she doesn't need to see him clearly to know who he is. She's disliked him from the moment they first met. Still, she uses the dimmed light to let her eyes adjust and take measure of the room.

Unfortunately, it's nearly featureless. Four walls - covered in aging white plaster, so unlikely to be a wooded cabin or shack. No windows. Low-ish ceilings, but neither low enough nor high enough to offer much insight - she could be in a basement or in a fourth floor room just as easily. By way of furniture there's only the oddly narrow mattress she's on - which is on some sort of in-built ledge - and another identical one on the opposite wall. There are light fixtures recessed into the ceiling, but many of the dusty bulbs look cracked. Heavy looking door. The only thing of note is the closed hook on the wall to which her shackles are attached; it looks like it's made of the same dark metal as the shackles themselves, and she wonders if it was recently installed. Or if it was built into the room for this express purpose.

As she finishes studying the room, her captor finishes studying her.

"Grace Van Pelt. You know, I underestimated you on that first case. I _was_ going to just pick up the old game; I did so hope that Teresa and I would have the time." He pauses, clearly hoping to get a rise out of her, and she refuses to give him anything.

"But then you broke up my little bugs! And then I remembered _your_ clever little phone traces from a couple of years ago - did you really think I hadn't noticed? And I thought, why play an old game when I can play my own new one? Though Red John did always find you interesting."


	8. Rooibos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "A saucer is smashed on the floor between his couch and her desk, and the tea spilling out of the miraculously intact cup is rooibos red."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was fun to write, though it isn't strictly case related. Also, I find that I and everyone else has more time over the weekend, so I'm gonna post more over the next couple days and see how that works out, now that I've finished writing all of this story.
> 
> Shout out to user 221b baker street on ffnet; I was inspired by a stylistic thing they did in their most disturbing fic and borrowed the concept (with a lot less panache and mastery). If they ever see this I hope they don't mind - more tribute to them than anything.

**AUSTIN, TX**

The sun is bright in the glass and steel lobby of the Austin field office building, and Lisbon takes a moment to enjoy it as she waits in line to get through security. She'd spotted Jane's garish silver trailer parked out back, and wonders if this will be one of those days he keeps coffee waiting for her when she arrives. These days he even sometimes extends that honor to Cho, and she likes knowing that they are friends too. She wonders if they ever hang out after work.

She drops her keys, badge, gun, and phone into the offered tray and steps through the metal detector, nodding a hello at the guard as she passes. The cute agent from the art theft squad shoots her a smile as she enters the elevator behind him, and she smiles back while filing in to make room for the agents behind her. This building (and the job) is so much bigger and more complex than what the CBI had been like, but she's determined to learn everyone's names by the end of the year. While she'd been at the head of the SCU, she knew everyone who she could call colleague, greeted most while on the way up to her office in the mornings. She isn't the head of anything here in Austin ( _yet_ , she thinks), but she still wants that sense of camaraderie.

The elevator dings as it opens onto their floor, and she steps out in the kind of good mood that makes a day productive.

And then she stops short.

Thomas McAllister is standing to her right, smiling as he paints a _Red_ face onto the glass of the fishbowl. Agent Fischer is motionless on the floor at his feet, and there is a pool of _Red_ under McAllister's shoes.

She staggers away towards the bullpen, wanting to call out for help, but her throat feels too tight. She's still backing up when her foot bumps into something soft, and she looks down to see Abbott sprawled out there, looking all the world like he's napping - except for the garish _Red_ mark she can see through the ripped fabric on his back. Donny Culpepper is standing over him, holding a knife, and he smiles at her in recognition. He says nothing, but taps his nose as if to remind her of the time she'd punched him. His fingers leave _Red_ splotches on his skin.

She turns, breath coming in gasps, and there's Wylie and Cho slumped near each other, twin _Red_ slivers across their throats and a similarly shaped smile on Reede Smith's face as he crouches behind them in his undershirt, still bleeding from the gunshot wound she'd inflicted two years ago. He looks up and calls out to her.

"Lisbon! Give me a hand, would you?" His hands are _Red_. Very _Red_.

The next desk over is the one Rigsby has been using, and he is slumped over in the chair. There is a line of _Red_ sloping across his chest and dripping down his arm, pooling in his palm. Inches from his outstretched fingers is Grace, but she too is limp, a wide _Red_ gash marring her pale blouse and making her usually vibrant auburn hair look somehow faded and rusty.

"No no Smith, I need her here." Silhouetted against the sun and the faded brown club couch is Bertram. Over the couch is that awful smiling face again, dripping down the window, pulling _Red_ streaks down the glass. Jane is laying half on the couch as if his legs had given out before he could reach it fully; his torso (covered in _Red_ , so _Red_ ) leaning heavily against the cushions. A saucer is smashed on the floor between his couch and her desk, and the tea spilling out of the miraculously intact cup is rooibos _Red_. But then Jane moves, reaching out a hand (it too is _Red_ , covered in _Red_ ) towards her, and she realizes he's still alive, if just barely. She can't bear to see him die.

She's thwarted in her rush to him as someone grabs her arm, and she whips around to see Ray Haffner's smiling face. There is a scar on the right side of his face where she had seen a burn in the ruined wreckage of a guesthouse in Malibu, and it makes him look lopsided.

"Teresa," he says. "You need this." He presses a knife into her shaking hands. His shirt is covered in sprays of _Red_.

She drops it immediately, and finally, finally reaches for her sidearm. Her fingers meet air. Beside her, someone chuckles, and dark hair swims into her vision. Volker. He touches her back, too intimate, and smiles. There's _Red_ smeared across his face and marring his white teeth.

"Sorry about this, Teresa," he says. And swings a knife at her throat.

She sits up with a shriek, reaching for her neck. Blinks and stares around her, uncomprehending. Suddenly, Jane is on his knees beside her chair, a hand on her knee and another reaching up to stroke her hair.

She stares at him, and then looks around. The bullpen is spotless as usual, no dead men and no dead friends and no red anywhere. There's no sunlight streaming through the windows, and she can see the pitch of night behind the couch.

"You're okay," Jane says softly. "It's all right. You're safe."

It takes a few more seconds for her breathing to return to normal, and then she drops her face into her hands, embarrassed. "I must have fallen asleep," she offers, voice muffled by her palms.

Jane's hand leaves her hair, but comes to rest on her forearm, gently pulling it away from her face. "We've all been up a long time. It happens."

She lets him pull her hand away and raises her head, looking around before meeting his gaze. "Where is everyone?"

He shrugs, a little sheepish. "Rigsby was on edge, so Cho took him to get something to eat, get him out of here for a little while. Abbott told everyone else to go home for a couple hours and get a little rest. You were uh, you were already asleep, and I figured if I woke you you wouldn't actually go home and rest."

She narrows her eyes at him. "And what about you? The trailer's parked outside, you didn't have to stay here."

He frowns, affronted. "That's an _Airstream_ , not just any old trailer." He scoffs. " _Trailer_."

She smacks his shoulder, still in easy reach somewhere near her right leg. "Whatever. Answer the question. Why aren't you getting some sleep in that silver bucket of yours?"

He lets go of her knee to clutch dramatically at his shoulder, but then just smiles ruefully instead of answering.

Oh right. If she's having nightmares again, there's no telling what he sees when he closes his eyes. Her gaze travels back along the bullpen, and stops at the desk Rigsby had been given. God. If nightmares afflict her and scare Jane from even attempting to sleep, what about poor Rigsby? How could he be coping?

Jane must have followed her gaze, because he says, "He was… in a bad way, I doubt he can even think of sleeping right now. He came to ask me to do whatever it takes. He said he'll do anything." He worries at his lower lip, then tilts his head towards his shoulder in a half shrug.

"Grace is a dear friend, so I would anyway. I just have to figure out what I need to do." Then he corrects himself. "I _will_ find her. She's family."

Lisbon is too wound up to even begin to worry about Grace. She has to be alive. She has to be.

He stands, and offers a hand. It's blessedly not red. "Come on. I'll make you some tea."

They're in the break room surrounded by the fragrance of chamomile by the time Lisbon feels fully calm again. She thinks of the first time she'd had this particular brand of nightmare, the day when she'd fought with Jane and fallen right into Red John's trap. He'd never admitted directly, but she's always known that he'd spent the entire night by her side in that hospital room, and his gentle presence had been right there when she woke from the nightmare that time too.

She can't begin to explain it, but in moments like these with Jane she feels a sense of - not safety, exactly; of the two of them she's far more qualified to keep them safe - but something. Security, maybe. A sense of trust that runs deeper than any lies he might tell or tricks he might play. In moments like these it's very difficult to keep him at arm's length no matter what he does on other days. She isn't sure she wants to, in any case. She'd been missing him even though they're working on the same team.

She takes a sip of her tea and watches him rock back and forth on the balls of his feet as he debates something.

Eventually, he looks back at her, and says, "I think I need to go back to the motel room. I can't shake the feeling that there's something I've missed."

She thinks she can see right through him. He doesn't want to go back there alone.


	9. Collateral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lisbon and Jane go back to the motel.

**AUSTIN, TX**

Jane is quiet in the passenger seat as Lisbon drives them back to the motel, clearly stewing over something by the way he stares out the window and fidgets with his fingers over his mouth. He glances over at her every now and then, but she doesn't give him the satisfaction of asking what he wants.

Eventually, she breaks the silence, though she keeps her eyes on the road as she drives. "I've been thinking, and I can't figure out why Ardiles was bugged or killed at all."

He hums, inclining his head and encouraging her to continue.

"I mean - this all feels like it's about our team. The phone taps, hiring Culpepper knowing you'd hired him before, shooting at Grace and Rigsby, even the uh, the Red John thing."

She does glance at him briefly then, but returns her eyes to the road equally quickly. "I just don't see where Ardiles fits into the picture."

"That's an excellent question, Lisbon," he says, casting her a nod, but then he falls silent again.

They're almost at the motel when he finds his voice. "We got to know Ardiles because he was the one who prosecuted me at Timothy Carter's trial."

"Yeah. Bertram had been on the warpath. Someone told me they heard him encouraging Ardiles to do his worst." _I was worried you'd never make it out._

"Hmm. Well, I always got the feeling that Red John had been hoping to get me locked up for a few years at that point, so that makes sense, since Bertram was Blake."

She parks under one of the flickering street lights at the edge of the motel's tiny parking lot, but neither of them get out.

"Ardiles lost that case, obviously. And he was a bit of a, a certified road block on some of our cases afterwards. Not the most creative fellow, but if he or that judge had been Blake, I'd have been in prison indefinitely."

He continues to fidget with his fingers he talks, the clearest tell he has when he's thinking hard about something. (She thinks sometimes that his hands are the most expressive part of him.)

"He was a good man."

"Certainly. But I wonder if he was being watched _because_ he was."

"What do you mean?"

"After it became clear that Blake had infiltrated just about everything in California, he should have been in high demand, right? An honest prosecutor who had neither been corrupted nor shown our team any extra favors. He should have been the Attorney General or maybe even in Congress by this time, but he ended up in the private sector."

"So did I. You weren't here, Jane. After you… left," she says, deliberately skirting around saying he'd killed a man and then run, "things were in chaos. Everyone's trust in law enforcement and in the Department of Justice was totally wrecked - mine included. Doors were closed for anyone connected to the CBI, but it was hard to want to go back anyway, not while the Blake Association was still around at every turn. We were all constantly looking over our shoulders, separated from our teams, missing our friends." _And I missed you most of all._

"I'm really sorry, Lisbon."

She shrugs, looking out the window. It wasn't really his fault, but he hadn't stuck around to deal with it either. "Anyway, why does that mean Ardiles would have been targeted?"

"Well uh, I think some of his closed doors - and probably yours too - might have been Blake members shutting him out, not letting him get close where he could spot them. Outside of our team, he knew our case files best, because he was prosecuting them. But I get the feeling that Timothy Carter is relevant in a way."

He falls silent again, and she rolls her eyes, but indulges him. "Okay. Why?"

"As you know, most kidnappings are about the people who are left behind, the family," he says nonsensically. But then he tilts his head with a small smile as if to acknowledge he'd used a non-sequitur just to annoy.

"But aside from the uh, signature on the wall, there has been no ransom note, no demands. The only thing that really sticks out is that whoever did it wants it to look like Red John. It's possible they're trying to cast doubt, allege that McAllister was just another Carter, use that doubt to hide their tracks. We're just lucky that Abbott instituted a media ban for now."

"But you're sure."

"I didn't fail twice, Lisbon," he begins, but before he can continue to explain, she presses two fingers against his arm.

"Okay." _I believe you. No explanation needed._

He blows out a breath. "In any case, I think whoever it is was just watching Ardiles to make sure he never got too close, same reason we all were bugged. But Ardiles was the one who first suspected that his phone was being tapped, and he was killed for it. Like you said - maybe the discovery pushed our bad guy into action he hadn't been planning ahead for."

It's sad, that a man like Ardiles had just been collateral, but there's really never a good reason for anyone to have to die.

They take the stairs up to the motel room, Jane pausing briefly on the fifth step to consider something before apparently discounting it and continuing on his way. Lisbon trails behind him and keeps an eye out, alert despite her disrupted sleep.

The space has been largely left untouched since the previous evening, since it's an active crime scene with no body to clear away. The only changes are that the sheets were taken as evidence to see if any of the blood (too much) might have belonged to the assailant, and the laptop and phone taken to Wylie. The uncovered mattress still bears signs of what had transpired.

Lisbon finds Jane standing nearly exactly where she first found him the night before, once again fixated on the leering face. It's darker now, dried into the paint. She's sure she'll see it the next time she falls asleep.

Before she can ask him to tell her what he's thinking, he tilts his head and moves closer to the wall. "I was too, uh, hyped up to make sense of it before, but this isn't the same face. Beyond the fact that it isn't Red John."

"I thought there was something off about it too."

"It's thinner - two fingers instead of three - but the left eye is different. A little bigger, maybe. Can you pull up the crime scene photos from the prison?"

He takes Lisbon's phone when she hands it to him, and zooms in on the one bearing the smiling face. He ignores her smirk, not giving her the satisfaction of admitting that Wylie had shown him how to do so fairly recently.

"There. See? The left eye is distinct. I think there may have been detail, but when the blood dripped, it obscured whatever might have been there. I get the feeling that whoever drew these is a bit more... emotional, a little less methodical. This isn't clean like McAllister's scenes. But the eye is definitely distinct."

"The eye. Visualize? I heard they lost a chunk of their membership after Stiles' death." She cuts her eyes to him. "You don't think Stiles could have survived, do you?"

He shrugs. "It's possible. McAllister used that bomb to fake his death at my- in Malibu, but he survived, so the others could have too. But Stiles was already dying when I found him, so even if he survived the bomb, it wouldn't have been for long."

He hands her the phone and steps back to study the wall some more in silence, and then drops on all fours to peer under the bed.

Recognizing his usual crime scene observational antics, Lisbon realizes he'll be a while and ducks out of the room in search of the night clerk. Occasionally witnesses recalled new details in the first day or so once the adrenaline had passed, and she intended to find out if the young woman recognized a description of Bret Stiles (or if she remembered seeing anyone else). Jane always had some sort of strange respect for Stiles, despite the cult leader having been on his final list of suspects. But even though he hadn't been Red John, they'd never really teased out exactly what his (and Visualize's) connection had been to the serial killer. It couldn't hurt to ask and be sure he hadn't turned up.

The clerk is just shaking her head no when Jane appears at Lisbon's elbow, eyes a little wild and a frantic energy about him.

"What did you find?!"

"I found you gone, Lisbon!" He pulls her keys from her blazer pocket and directs her back towards the Suburban.

Surprised, she allows herself to be herded into the passenger seat. She'd been worried that he'd freeze up in panic again as soon as he got back into the room, but he'd seemed like his normal self when she'd gone downstairs.

When he finishes buckling himself into the driver's seat, she turns and fixes him with a look, silently demanding to know what the hell is up.

He ignores her and drives (albeit somewhat distractedly) for several miles until she loses her patience. "Jane! What the hell is going on!"

Finally, he sighs, and pulls over. They're on a side road somewhere on the banks of the Colorado River, overlooking the water. He stares out at the moonlight reflecting back as he speaks.

"I know you don't like talking about your nightmares. I know I don't usually like to either."

He turns to face her then, gaze intense. "I'd be honored if you wanted to tell me, but I'm not asking you to. I was thinking on our drive to the motel though, that maybe it's time to tell you about mine."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter frustrated me. The show never made any sort of explanation as to why Ardiles was killed or what that had to do with the Haibach plot (or even why they took Grace and not anyone else). I guess maybe to get the Rigsbys to Austin? That's why I left it in myself, to be honest. But at least in fanfic, maybe Ardiles' death could be granted some small explanation. Figuring out a good explanation within my narrative was something of a challenge though, so I dearly hope what I've had Jane come up with makes some sense. It's a little thin, I know. But Ardiles was collateral for the show and for our antagonist here, sad as that is.
> 
> Next up (tomorrow!) one of my fave chapters: some emotional honesty! what Cho and Rigsby are up to! and what's happening with Grace + Kidnapper™!


	10. Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grace, Cho and Rigsby, and a little emotional honesty from Jane (almost miraculous).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been all over the place with my update schedule, which is almost entirely thanks to the fact that I'm just impatient. But I noticed that the weekend effect is very real and so here's one final update for Sunday! Anyway better this than disappearing forever between updates as I used to do once upon a time (have you guys seen that one post where a fic updated a full 13 years later? I'm actually a bit impressed.) Oh! Also! For the most part, any new location names I use in this fic are actually real places and I want to thank google maps and street view for existing.
> 
> Thanks for your support so far!

**UNKNOWN LOCATION, TIME INDETERMINATE**

The unrelenting darkness begins to wear on Grace Van Pelt. That she knows where the door is is really no help; it's one of those that opens only from one side, a flat plate of metal replacing the doorknob on her side. She'd crawled over to try to prize it open anyway, finding some sort of stiff rubber flap covering the seams all the way around and sealing the darkness in with her. That the room is almost entirely plaster and cement and stone otherwise is also endlessly frustrating - there aren't any protruding nails, loose floorboards, or convenient splinters. She even tried yanking at the hook anchoring her to the wall to no avail. For all her trouble, she'd only managed to reopen the gash on her arm and exhaust herself. Such is the darkness that she has no idea if it was hours or days ago that she first woke up, and she wonders if the point is to slowly drive her crazy.

It's probably working, all told. And she's _hungry_.

That she's already seen her captor is also a bad sign; if she can identify him, it's almost certain that he won't let get go. Not that most would readily believe that a man thought to be dead for years now is suddenly back and haunting her. Though he seems to be a particularly unhinged looking ghost. He looks little like the man she'd first met all those years ago.

What frightens her most is that the second time he'd pushed open that door, he'd stunk of the rusty smell she associated with the worst, most bloody crime scenes. There had been a curved linoleum knife in his hand, its rubber handle stained.

Not a great omen.

To her immense relief, he hadn't tried to touch her, but the sight of him gesticulating with that knife set her teeth on edge. Injured and hungry as she was and bound as her feet were, she was too unbalanced to try to overpower him and take the knife, but that hadn't stopped her from lurching to her feet and raising her arms up in case she needed to defend herself.

But he'd only bragged about how easy it was to break in and out of some federal prison, knowing all their SOPs as well as he did. He was ranting a little incoherently, sounding markedly different than the calm man that she'd once known. And then he'd used that knife to carve a grotesque smiling face into the plaster of the wall across from her. Its right eye is a downturned slit like the ones she'd seen at too many crime scenes, but its left eye is bigger, open and staring down at her. All the lines are messy.

It looks like a self portrait.

She doesn't want to think about it staring at her through the darkness.

Instead, she thinks of Maddy and the way her teeth are beginning to show when she laughs. And she thinks of Ben and the story he likes to be read before his naps. And she thinks of Wayne, who had loved her from practically the moment he first laid eyes on her. It had taken her a little while longer, but she loves him with everything she has. He must be beside himself with worry, trying to overturn every possible clue. She hopes he's safe.

The door opens again.

**RUDY'S COUNTRY STORE AND BAR-B-Q, AUSTIN, TX**

Kimball Cho would take a bullet to protect his friends, would go to many lengths to know they are safe, but he has no idea how to help his oldest friend at the moment.

Around the 24 hour mark since they'd discovered Van Pelt missing, Rigsby had taken to pacing the bullpen, his face ashen and sweating, running a hand over and over through his short hair. The dark circles under his eyes were beginning to resemble bruises. They'd all heard him when he'd taken Jane by the shoulders and loudly insisted he leave no line uncrossed if it meant finding Grace alive.

At a look from Abbott, Cho had herded his friend out of the building with the promise of a late dinner.

Almost two hours and an equal number of cups of coffee later, they're sitting in a diner, but the greasy fries and burger in front of Rigsby are cold and all but untouched. The only thing the man had allowed himself was coffee to keep himself awake and a milkshake to stop the grumbling sounds from his stomach. As soon as the food had come, he'd made the mistake of wondering if Grace had gotten anything to eat since she'd gone missing. Evidently, that had promptly killed his appetite, and he'd taken to staring at the sesame seeds on his burger bun as if simultaneously betrayed and expecting them to tell him where his wife was.

Half an hour after reaching the diner, Cho had called to check in on Ben and then on Maddy on Rigsby's behalf when Rigsby took one look at the family picture on his home screen and promptly began hyperventilating. Thankfully, both kids were only too happy to see their Uncle Cho, and he kept the camera turned firmly away from their father, who frankly looked like shit. No need to frighten them too.

Eventually assured that his children were just fine and not kidnapped or harmed, Rigsby seized his phone and began intently watching the scant security footage from the motel and prison over and over again with a manic energy, despite the fact that Wylie's search algorithms had turned up nothing useful. He'd been at it for over an hour.

They have to find her, and soon.

There are moments when Cho feels lonely, sometimes, but after witnessing Jane's exhausting ten year long quest for vengeance and Rigsby's frantic panic now, he's glad he's never been this attached to anyone in his life. It's so much easier to just have the occasional flings. He sends a text to Kim, letting her know he won't be dropping by for some time - until this is all resolved. He doesn't worry that she won't understand.

And then he turns to his friend. "Come on man. You need to take a break. We'll find her, but you can't drive yourself crazy like this before we do. She'll kill me if I let you."

Rigsby finally sets the phone down, and dredges up some distant cousin of a smile to paste on his face. It falls almost immediately.

"What if it is Red John, Cho? I _can't_ lose her. Not like that. What am I going to do?"

"It isn't. Jane said so himself. You know how he is about Red John."

"But he was wrong once."

"Yeah, and it nearly killed him. He went on a six month bender and locked himself up in the attic all the time and started keeping even more secrets than usual. He still acts a little crazy some days, but he wasn't wrong twice."

"I really hope you're right, man."

"I am. And besides. Red John never kidnapped anyone, not like this." He recalls the case with the girl kidnapped by that sheriff in San Angelo with Red John's okay, but wisely doesn't mention it.

"Jane always said that Red John woke up his victims first, see their fear or something. But whoever has Van Pelt used chloroform. It isn't him." He reaches over to drop a hand on Rigsby's slumped shoulder. "Wayne. It isn't him. Just someone who maybe wants us to think it is. Or some sort of fan."

Finally, Rigsby blows out a breath and nods. "Yeah. Okay."

**MOUNT BONNELL, OVERLOOKING THE COLORADO RIVER, AUSTIN, TX**

_"I know you don't like talking about your nightmares. I know I don't usually like to either."_

_He turns to face her then, gaze intense. "I'd be honored if you wanted to tell me, but I'm not asking you to. I was thinking on our drive to the motel though, that maybe it's time to tell you about mine._ _"_

Jane is gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles are bloodless, and Lisbon is glad that he'd pulled over. She doesn't enjoy his driving on a good day, but agitated as he is, he's even more of a sure recipe for disaster.

"Jane," she begins. "You don't have to."

He shakes his head, still looking at her. "I think I do, Teresa. This case… Grace being taken… you need to know." A sigh.

"For a long time, they were how you'd probably imagine. Most nights I'd fall asleep only to walk down that hallway again, see Red John's note. Feel the same sense of dread when I open the door and find that face staring out at me, every night like it was the first time. And I'd see their- their bodies laying there. Sometimes I would hear him laughing, taunting me to catch him. Sometimes one of them would still be barely alive, and on the worst nights it would be Charlotte. She'd reach up for me, and she'd ask me why I'd done this to her."

Lisbon has long suspected, but it is awful to hear it said. She isn't sure she's ready to hear any more; she's always known he's carried guilt like a second skin and he's always known that she's aware, but neither of them has ever said it out loud. There are so many lines left uncrossed between them and a distance that had started growing into a chasm from the moment he'd put his hand to McAllister's throat. Only yesterday's shock had brought them back. So she doesn't open her mouth, doesn't stop him from saying anything else she's suddenly afraid to hear, just steadily meets his eyes.

He breaks her gaze and looks down at his hands that have finally released the wheel and are now in his lap.

"But after a while, for several _years_ now, sometimes I'd open that door and- and it'd be you there. Or I'd walk into your office or into my attic or into a crime scene and it would be your body there, cut up like they were. There would be a face on the wall."

Abruptly, he pushes the Suburban's door open and climbs out, and she watches him walk out to the edge of the bluff and lean against the railing, facing the water. She's reminded of the awful evening when he'd pulled over to watch the sun set and then abandoned her to go after Red John alone, and for a moment she's tempted to not get out and go after him. But then his words hit her and she begins to understand the startling depth of the terror he feels. For her.

After a moment, she exits the car and follows him, mirroring his posture against the railing. "Tell me," she encourages softly.

"I still see them sometimes on hard nights. But that night Red John called me from your phone…" He trails off, hanging his head with his shoulders hunched up and tense. His golden hair glows silver in the moonlight.

"I couldn't breathe. All I could think of was that after everything, he'd gotten you. I couldn't breathe." He clutches at the railing and his ring catches the light.

"And then I found you with his mark on your face. It was worse than my nightmares about you, Teresa, because it was real. I couldn't move until they told me you were unharmed. And last night, seeing another face on the wall, after knowing you'd driven Grace back to the motel…"

"You thought it was both of us," she concludes, horrified. She'd never considered that she might have been in danger too, or that Jane's panic had been about her. No wonder he'd reacted poorly to finding her gone while that face still grinned on the wall. He'd already lost his family, and now she - and the team - are all that he has left.

He nods and turns his head to face her again, expression so blank it looks like _misery_. She isn't sure she's ever seen him look like this.

"You were right on that flight to New York. I wasn't there for the last two years, and I know I have no right to ask this, but I've- I've always been selfish. The truth is, Teresa, that I'll never be able to wake up knowing I'd lost you. You have no idea how much I- how much you mean to me. I won't survive it again, I _can't_. Promise me you'll be safe. _Promise me_."

She can't promise that, not in their line of work, so she just ducks under his arm and wraps both of hers around his waist. She doesn't point out that of the two of them he's the one who's made habits both of leaving and of putting himself in danger. When she'd first gotten to Austin she'd intended to be more wary of him to protect herself, but none of them could have ever foreseen something like this. She doesn't want to be wary of him anymore, just wants to keep him closer instead of at arm's length.

She feels his heartbeat thudding in his chest when his hands release the railing and pull her closer, and she shifts to rest her forehead against his collarbone. A ghost of a kiss is pressed against her hair, light and fleeting enough that she can pretend she imagined it if she wants to, leaving the lines as uncrossed as she chooses. She thinks she can feel the words he has not said hovering around them. Maybe they've been there for years, a shield for just the two of them, keeping them safe through everything they've been through. She does not ask for them to be voiced and she does not say them either. She hopes he can hear them anyway. She tightens her arms.


	11. Old Cases and Old Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have their Eureka moment following a little teamwork.

**AUSTIN, TX**

They all get back to their desks (and couch) around the same time, and suddenly the bullpen feels less stark, less steel and edge, less impersonal and modern and glass and-

(It's just missing one, but it could be home, would be _home_.)

It wasn't just the brick and dust and slight shabbiness of the old CBI building that made it feel so warm and soft in memory after all.

Lisbon makes herself a cup of coffee and lets its scent carry her past Cho and Rigsby and Wylie and back to her desk. She watches as Abbott moves past the bullpen, casting a glance at each of them before disappearing into his office.

She has a thought.

* * *

The buttery, broken-in old leather of the couch and the comforting smell of fresh Earl Grey was never going to be quite enough.

He'd been a man who fought tooth and nail on behalf of his family for ten years and it only takes one look at Lisbon brushing a comforting hand against Rigsby's shoulder as she passes and Cho surrounded by piles and piles of yellowing pages from their old cases to know that he is still that man fighting for family. The picture is sorely lacking one member, and he will go to any lengths to bring her back.

Jane fidgets with his ring as he thinks, perched on the edge of his couch with the images of Van Pelt and Ardiles and Culpepper staring down from the big screens to his right. He sifts through memories like a blackjack dealer handles cards at a casino, but it isn't until he sees Lisbon sit up when she watches Abbott passing through that he begins to alight on something.

He has the beginnings of an idea not yet fully formed.

* * *

It's Rigsby who eventually puts down the files he's working on - he's looking at cases involving deviations from Red John's MO, copycats, serial killings with knives - and initiates the conversation.

"Where are we at?"

Jane and Lisbon share a brief, yet completely silent conversation, and to Rigsby's surprise, Jane seems to concede defeat; Lisbon is the one who shifts forward in her seat to speak.

"Jane and I went back to take another look at the motel room - something about the face seemed different from old Red John crime scenes. It looks like the left eye is bigger, distinct somehow, and same is true for the one in Culpepper's cell. I want to look into seeing if there might be any connection to Visualize."

Suddenly, Rigsby cuts in. "I just saw something about that actually." There's a pause as he shuffles through the pile in front of him.

"Remember that cold case we had at the farm where someone found three bodies, smiley face on the back of the barn?" He hands the file to Lisbon, who nods without opening it.

"Yeah, Elliston Farm. It looked like two of them may have been his first victims."

"Yeah, exactly. It was a Visualize farm, and we never really figured out what the connection was between them and Red John, only that Grace had talked to some priest who remembered a kid drawing that face back in '88. What was kind of weird was that it looked like Red John shot them with a shotgun instead of using a knife. He never really did that after. It could have just been figuring out his first kills though."

Jane leans forward, interested. "You're right, he didn't. And you said that Culpepper shot at you and Grace with a shotgun."

"Forensics said that Ardiles was shot with shotgun pellets too." Cho adds.

"But we already know Culpepper didn't take Grace, he was in holding right here." Ever practical, Lisbon hops in before they can fall down a rabbit hole. "What's the connection?"

Rigsby sits back in his seat, a little deflated, but Jane waves a hand at Lisbon. "It isn't Culpepper that might have a connection to the farm, it's whoever hired him - assuming that the same person has Grace. Maybe they supplied the shotgun, who knows. Rigsby's right, it could worth looking into, especially since it looks like the employer wants people to think Red John is back. There are no coincidences."

He falls silent, standing to peer at the photo of Culpepper still up on one of the screens in the front of the room.

"We realized yesterday that whoever hired him must have had access to our files - had to be someone high level," begins Cho when it appears Jane has no further thoughts to share. He glances in the direction of Abbott's office. "I double checked to make sure no one from Abbott's teams could have done it, since they had access after the CBI shut down."

Lisbon turns a horrified look on him, clearly not wanting to imagine that she could once again be surrounded by coworkers in the pocket of a psychopath.

Thankfully, Cho only shrugs. "They're all accounted for at the time she went missing. It's unlikely."

Someone clears their throat from off to the side. They all turn to find Wylie standing there with his mouth clamped shut and a laptop in his hands.

"Wylie. What are you doing." Somehow, Cho has become Wylie's de facto mentor, though he still doesn't quite seem to know what to make of the young agent.

"Uh. Well. Mr. Rigsby said 'where are we at' and I was going to say something, but then you guys were talking about an old case and-" He cuts himself off at Cho's raised eyebrows and clears his throat.

"It um, doesn't have to do with what you guys were just talking about, but I was working on back-tracing the phone hacks and I thought it was a little weird." Rigsby leans forward and Lisbon gives him an encouraging look, so he forges on.

"I was looking for any strings of code the hacker may have left behind in the bugs. They don't usually have any functions attached, but a lot of hackers like leaving their mark - like an autograph or a calling card. The weird thing is that these didn't have any, but they did have something else." He opens the laptop and puts it on the desk nearest him before keying in something to pull up a dark screen full of letters and numbers.

They all stare at him blankly.

"Oh. The weird thing is that as far as I can tell, whoever set these up was using software that's proprietary to the FBI. It took me a while to find it though, because it's actually pretty outdated stuff - what they were using when I was still in high school. But it's definitely an FBI surveillance program."

Eventually, it's Rigsby who recovers first, and he cuts his eyes between Wylie and Cho. "Are you saying that someone at the FBI has my wife?"

Wiley's eyes widen. "No! I don't think so. I can't be sure, since the software hides the IP address, but it's really pretty old and unsophisticated. Any current agents would never use it, not when we've made some serious upgrades since then. I mean, this stuff is from when George Bush was still president."

Cho crosses his arms. "So what you're saying is that someone who used to work for the FBI back then but probably doesn't anymore is responsible. Could anyone else have gained access?"

Wylie shakes his head immediately, but then rethinks it and shrugs. "Uh, I guess anything is possible. But it's pretty hard to hack into the FBI and steal a program like that. I tried once." His face pinks a little at the admission.

There's a brief silence as they mull this over.

"I think," offers Lisbon, "it might be time to get in touch with Madeline Hightower."

"Hightower? Why?"

Lisbon shrugs. "She's one of the only higher ups we had back at the CBI who is still alive, aside from Minelli. She was pretty helpful in the early days when I was tracking Blake, actually. She might have some insight."

Jane moves in a way that's halfway between a shrug and a nod, agreeing. "Madeline once told me that both the FBI and DHS had their eye on our Red John investigation. I guess it's possible she could know if there was a connection between the CBI and the FBI."

Lisbon takes a laptop into the conference room and doesn't seem the least bit surprised when Jane crowds behind her and Rigsby and Cho follow suit, leaving Wylie back in the bullpen to continue picking his way through whatever evidence he can find.

"Teresa! It's good to see you. I hope you're settling in at the FBI all right - I did tell you that you were meant for more."

Lisbon smiles despite herself. Jane suspects that Madeline had become a friend to Lisbon, and though she doesn't seem particularly homesick for Washington, it's clear she misses their old boss.

"Chief, I'm afraid this isn't a social call - we might need your help."

"Who's we? Tell me it isn't something Patrick Jane did. And haven't I told you to call me Madeline?"

Jane gently pushes Lisbon's wheeled chair aside so she doesn't take up the whole of the tiny video frame and waves into the camera, letting Hightower have a second to recognize him, Cho, and Rigsby.

"Madeline, lovely to see you. I'm afraid it isn't me this time - Grace Van Pelt was taken, and whoever took her has been trying to make it look like Red John."

Lisbon nudges her way back in without missing a beat. "Look, I know you want to put Red John in the past as much as we do, Madeline, but we're hoping you might have some insight. We have some evidence that the person responsible may have had ties to the FBI back before 2008, but we also think that they had access to our files at the CBI."

Rigsby leans forward and looks directly into the little camera. "Please, ma'am. If you know anything that might help find my wife..."

Hightower blinks and sits back in her chair. That was a lot of information at once.

"Of course I'll help, there's nothing I wouldn't do for that woman after what she did for my kids - and me - but I don't know what kind of information you're looking for. I wasn't at the CBI very long, remember?"

Well. There was no forgetting the circumstances of her departure. Or her faked death.

Oh - _there's_ the idea.

"Actually, you've been helpful already. Talk later, Madeline!" Jane reaches over and unceremoniously ends the call.

"What the hell, man?"

"I know who has Grace."

At that moment, Wylie knocks on the glass of the conference room and lets himself in. "I think I have something. Oh - am I interrupting?"

Cho takes charge. "Jane first. Then Wylie."

"I suspect Madeline Hightower isn't the only colleague of ours who faked their death. In fact, someone we met right after the incident with O'Laughlin might have too. Someone who worked for the CBI. Someone with FBI connections. Someone whose FBI connections were specifically in _surveillance and wiretaps_. And I believe he was connected to Visualize too."

"Out with it, Jane!"

"Raymond Haffner."

Before any of them can react, Wylie nearly hops in excitement. "That makes sense!"

"It does?"

"Yes! I found something, but I wasn't sure what it meant. I was looking to see if Ms. Van Pelt had gotten any threatening messages or was working on anything that could have caught anyone's attention, and there wasn't anything you hadn't already mentioned, Mr. Rigsby. But you guys did some seriously cool work on tracking Blake, by the way - and I found something else. I uh, hope it was okay that I poked around?"

Rigsby nods at him. "What is it?"

"Well it looks like she had been working on something but set it aside a year ago? She found symbols in some old CBI emails, but she only had access to the emails she received, and didn't have a full legend of symbols to search for."

"Code breaking was always more Jane's department."

"Really? That's pretty cool. Um, so I ran her query on the server we had set up with all the electronic CBI material and compared it to the list that Agent Abbott gave me." He turns a sheepish look on Jane.

"I figured Abbott would try to get someone to decrypt it. Go on Wylie, less exposition."

"Right. Anyway, I still didn't have the full legend, but my program was able to decrypt some of it, and there are several emails that end in the same seven symbols, like a signature. The last email was actually sent the day the CBI was closed, but not from within the building. I didn't know whose name it was, but it sounds like maybe you guys do." He clicks a few buttons and the screen at the front of the room shows a new display.

Seven symbols large on the screen, beginning with a sun and ending with what looks like the letter omega over a horizontal bar.

He clicks another button and the symbols are replaced with seven letters.

RAYMOND

"Son of a bitch."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing a missing persons investigation in which there is neither ransom note nor witnesses is apparently pretty difficult! I (and some of you) knew who did it and I knew what clues the team needed to figure out but getting them to actually pull on those threads is like... narrative gymnastics. And I also wanted them to not get everything right immediately (so sometimes they start down the wrong paths too). Buuut I've cut what was going to be chapter 12 and added part of it here so they make progress a little faster!
> 
> For Jane and Lisbon - I quite like the idea that when they aren't incomprehensibly on the outs with each other, they're both quite good at reading the other. A lot of their relationship in the show and thus far in this fic is hiding in the words unspoken and the things they do instead of the things they say. Their wordless conversations and finishing each others thoughts is credit to the fact that they are in fact good friends who understand each other. While not saying things out loud can sometimes lead them into very stupid misunderstandings, that's the show's business and not mine lol
> 
> All right. Time to give Grace some page time. Almost to the end now!


	12. Et Voila

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The third and fourth times the door opens on Grace.

**UNKNOWN LOCATION, TIME INDETERMINATE**

Such is the unchanging dark and the room's profound lack of options for both escape and timekeeping that she begins to mark time by the sight of the door opening. The third time it opens, Grace Van Pelt is both relieved and filled with dread when she sees him without the knife in his hands. That she would prefer him to have it is in itself a terrible irony, but as things are, he is dangerous because she cannot predict what he will do. Aside from the cuts he had presumably inflicted while she was unconscious, he had not physically harmed her again. But the darkness and isolation are a violence too. And his too-casual manner of speaking with her as if they are simply old colleagues and not captor and captive is unsettling at best. She thinks her earlier assessment of him is still appropriate - he looks unhinged: disheveled and not quite right. But despite his appearance, Raymond Haffner acts perfectly lucid this time as he walks in with a covered paper plate replacing the knife in his hands.

He hands it to her and she discovers it holds a sandwich. She's so hungry by then that she practically inhales all of it before her brain catches up to the very real possibility that it could have been poisoned. She stops chewing and looks up at him in the sparse light filtering into the room from where the door is cracked, keenly feeling the misery of being shackled to the wall when the door is open for her to escape through.

He just watches her with some interest, and she finds herself unable to discern much from the look on his face. She supposes he doesn't look like he's had any added pleasure from watching her poison herself, though it's hard to tell and she can't exactly ask. Not for the first time, she wishes she had some of Jane's skills.

Wait. Maybe she _can_ get information out of him.

One of Jane's lessons sounds faintly in the back of her head. Sometime on a slow day in the early years of their working together at the CBI, she'd asked him how he got widows and witnesses and suspects to trust him so easily.

_The smile had spread across his face like butter on fresh pancakes, and he'd sat up on his couch and patted the cushion next to him, apparently thrilled to have been asked. She'd complied at sat next to him, unable to resist that friendly infectious smile of his. Almost as if on cue, the boss had wandered into the bullpen on her way to the break room for what must have been her fourth cup of coffee of the day. She had stopped short at the sight of Jane's grin and narrowed her eyes in suspicion before apparently deciding she didn't want to know what he was up to._

_As soon as Lisbon had looked away from them, Jane stood to stop her from walking past, throwing a wink over his shoulder at Grace. "Oh, Lisbon, could you do me a favor and grab one of my teabags when you're done making your coffee? I'm afraid I made a cardinal error and failed to steep long enough earlier. I must have been distracted." He'd thrust his cup and saucer out to her as if to provide evidence of his mistake._

_Lisbon's eyebrows had climbed behind her bangs, clearly disbelieving, but she'd nodded and been on her way._

_"What was that about?" Grace had asked, confused. It seemed like Jane being his usual self, amusing himself by irritating Lisbon on purpose. Theirs was a strange friendship. If he'd really needed to fix his tea, he could easily have gotten up to do it himself. Especially considering that Lisbon had been in a testy mood that week, whatever case they'd worked on last dragging into days of depositions and testimonies at the ADA's urging. She, Wayne, and Cho had been steering clear of their boss, unwilling to risk her wrath. Sometimes Grace thought Jane had no self preservation instincts whatsoever._

_Jane had only tilted his head, his boyish enthusiasm undimmed. He'd always seemed so cheerful in those days. "You see, dear Grace, the easiest way to get someone to trust you is to ask them for something, have them do you a little favor. At a bar, you might ask your mark to pass you a napkin. Or at a crime scene, you can ask a witness for the time. Or, in my case, for a cup of tea." He'd brandished his turquoise cup again._

_Suddenly the way he was constantly asking grieving widows and family members for tea or food or directions to the bathroom made some sense. But surely it wouldn't work on someone already on edge like the boss clearly had been all week?_

_Lisbon had returned a minute or two later, one hand wrapped around her coffee cup as if to cradle it away from anybody who might object to her caffeine intake, and the other hand stretched out to hand Jane his teabag. Jane had dimpled at her when he accepted it, and then patted the couch cushion on his other side. She had the usual reserved-for-Jane pout on her face._

_"Come on Lisbon, allow me the pleasure of sitting with my two most dear and favorite women in the world and tell me how your day has been! Has our thieving, jealous friend been upgraded to Murder One yet?"_

Oh come on, like that'll work, _Grace had thought._

 _To her surprise, Lisbon had rolled her eyes at his words but actually sat beside him and told them about the latest stunt the defense lawyer had pulled, the judge's demeanor, and the fact that Ardiles kept requesting more meetings. Jane's expression was of keen and possibly even genuine interest in whatever Lisbon had to say, but something about his body language clearly said_ Et voila.

_Grace had noticed Wayne watching the proceedings with interest, and looked up then to meet his gobsmacked expression with one of her own. At his desk, Cho was smirking silently into his paperwork, the shadow of a dimple just visible._

She wonders now if she can make use of the impromptu lesson. She'd tried it once or twice with witnesses when he'd disappeared to Vegas, but never in a situation like this.

She knows she can't appeal to Haffner's sympathies - if he has any - by talking about Maddy and Ben or about her own role as mother. That wouldn't work, and worse, would draw attention to the kids. Asking him to change the terms of her captivity, even as simply as to leave a light on or to tighten her shackles to stop them chafing might be going too far for a first step.

Maybe something more immediate.

She fakes a cough, and then takes a breath at the exact right (wrong) time around the last bite of her sandwich to turn the fake cough into a real one as she chokes a little on the crumb trying to invade her airway. Her eyes begin streaming.

"Please," she manages through the coughing fit. "Can you get me some water?"

He continues to watch her for just a moment further, and then seems to decide that her cough is real. He leaves the room without a word, but returns shortly with a bottle. He leaves the door open a little wider, letting more light in. The bottle he hands her is sealed, so she decides it must be safe enough and downs the whole thing in one go.

She re-caps it and sets it down beside her with what she hopes passes for a grateful smile instead of the grimace she feels, and then he speaks for the first time after coming in.

"You really are quite beautiful," he says. "Red John was right to be so interested in you."

_Gross. But all right. Let's test the trust and see what he'll share._

"I always thought he was too busy with Jane to be interested in anyone else, but you sound like you knew him pretty well."

Haffner laughs, and she notices in the slightly brighter light that though his short hair is nearly white as always, the scruffy, unkempt beard on his cheeks is reddish. He'd always been clean shaven the few times she'd dealt with him before.

"You're right, Patrick Jane was always his favorite game to play, but it wasn't the only one. No, he liked you from the moment you met in Napa, and he had big plans for you. But then his agent on you revealed himself, and a jury let Jane go free even after he killed Timothy Carter. After that, Red John was simply too busy to return to you. But luckily for you, I'm not busy at all, and I no longer care what Patrick Jane does."

That a serial killer had wanted her is chilling, and the sparse sandwich in her otherwise empty belly churns. Her head has yet to stop aching, the scant food having little remediation against the double effects of blood loss and hunger.

In hindsight, the idea that the man in front of her is somehow connected to Red John is unsurprising. Haffner had first appeared in their lives sometime in the aftermath of the awful day when she'd been forced to kill her own fiancé, a man who'd only wormed his way into her life at the behest of the serial killer. She doesn't want to consider the implications of Craig having been sent to further some plot that was specifically against her, rather than as a mole working against their whole team, though that too begins to make sense. He never really got close enough to anyone else to get information on them. After that day, she had been too hurt and too angry and too heartbroken and too many other things to take much notice of Haffner. The others had been too busy worrying about her and trying to sabotage him to keep their team together to spare enough thought for suspicion. Though eventually, years later, he'd ended up on one of Jane's lists. She wonders what put him there.

She's reluctant to ask what his plans are for her, preferring not to know. But she is also afraid that she'll learn what those plans are the hard way if she doesn't keep him talking. She tries to keep her tone light.

"How come you weren't part of the Blake Association, since you were close to Red John?"

His mild expression turns sinister somehow and she feels even more unsettled when he doesn't answer her directly. "Prisons are built with stones of Law," he says, and she suspects he's quoting. "The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God."

And then he turns from her and lays a hand on the grotesque face he'd carved into the wall, and his voice takes on a reverent quality.

"But only one smile alone, that betwixt the candle and grave - it only once smiled can be. But when it once is smiled, there's an end to all Misery."

He faces her again, and his face matches the wall. "Red John was a busy man, Grace. He didn't have the time to run the Association. But like I said, I'm not busy at all."

She'd found a leader none of them had thought to look for. She keeps him talking.

_Et voila._

* * *

**SOME TIME LATER**

Regret.

She'd gotten a little complacent, hoping against evidence to the contrary - and despite knowing better - that because he had such a lengthy and civil if not amicable conversation with her that maybe he wouldn't physically harm her again. She was wrong, and now she just feels endless regret. And pain.

Sometime after he'd left following their last conversation, she'd suddenly realized that she needed to pee. That she hadn't needed to before must have been some combination of adrenaline and blood loss and lack of food and water. But that single bottle seemed to have kicked down the dam with a force, and she _really_ needed to go.

So she'd yelled his name, hoping that her voice would carry through the heavy door and to wherever the hell Haffner went when he wasn't creeping her out.

Once he'd arrived and been convinced that her need was real, he'd had to untether her from the wall, and she'd begun to see her chance. But the bathroom break wasn't a ruse, and there really was no escaping until she reached a damn toilet. She supposed she could just soak her jeans, but the fact was that she had no idea _where_ she was, and the idea of possibly wandering around far from civilization injured, weak, _and_ with wet pants just didn't seem like a great survival strategy.

It wasn't like the movies, and he'd refused to wait outside. She suffered the indignity of being watched, irritated with herself for caring.

And then she'd taken her chance. While washing her hands, she used an excess of soap, creating a big slippery mess in the sink. As soon as he came closer to tell her off and hurry her along, she seized the opportunity to cup her hands and throw the soapy water into his face, momentarily distracting him. She dashed past, shoving him hard into the wall, and ran through a huge room that had two large pools on either side of the hall and a staircase at its furthest end. She made it to the base of the stairs before a shot rang out, clipping the edge of her shoulder and throwing her forward into the stairwell. He was on her before she could even right herself, and the linoleum knife appeared in her peripheral vision as his hand clamped tight over her mouth and nose.

Now, she is back and shackled again in the dark room, a stinging but shallow cut across her throat, a deeper one from her right collarbone to the base of her ribs on the left, and more bruises than she cares to catalogue. Not to mention the bullet graze. And the previous cuts. She feels like a whetstone and a punching bag, though she supposes she can count herself lucky - even though it all hurt like hell, he'd been careful, and she wasn't going to die from her injuries. Probably.

He stalks off after the beating, muttering darkly about making sure the neighbors hadn't heard her scream.

So she isn't in the middle of nowhere - in fact, from what little she saw while running, she thinks she is tucked away in what looks like a _damn spa_ of some kind. Even worse, she is trapped what was probably once a _massage room_ , though the door and the shackles and the hook make her wonder if this is less massage room and more room for weird rituals.

Still. _Neighbors_.

She should have just made a run for it, toilet be damned.

She wonders if anyone will ever find her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really did not want to write a torture/violence scene and I hate how much violence against women happens in media, but it was also unlikely that Haffner would be painting faces on walls and killing Culpepper in jail and then just continuously talk at Van Pelt without doing her any harm. Especially if he was a weird little disciple of a dead serial killer and a bit less stable than we last saw him on the show. So the last scene involves violence, but without egregious descriptions and directly following an attempt on her part to save herself.
> 
> Fun fact: William Blake wrote a poem called The Smile, the ending of which I quoted there. It's suitably creepy and unsettling, though I have no idea if it ever had any relevance to RJ's use of a smiley face on the show. As soon as I read it though I knew it had to make its way into this fic, and while I don't intend on dragging everyone into a lengthy and insane X-Files like conspiracy, it unexpectedly wrote itself into Ray's mouth and turned him into a leader, even though that wasn't my intention when I started writing! The other thing Haffner says - about Law and the lion - also Blake. Turns out Blake had a lot of disdain for mortal/legal laws and was much more interested in divine law - which we know is much more subject to interpretation (for good and for bad). Anyway I'll be explaining it (leadership) a bit more before we're through don't worry!
> 
> Let's see how the team works it out! Nearly there. I'm going to upload the last few chapters this weekend, because things have come up irl and I can't spent lots of time here. Luckily for me (and you!) all the writing has been done for a while, so it's just minor edits and posting :)


	13. Elvis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which dead cult leaders (probably) don't party it up with dead pop/rock stars.

**AUSTIN, TX**

_He clicks another button and the symbols are replaced with seven letters._

_RAYMOND_

_"Son of a bitch."_

"How is this possible?"

"He didn't have the tattoo!"

"Didn't we have DNA evidence?"

"Did anyone die in that explosion? Is Brett Stiles secretly alive and living underground like Elvis?"

"Elvis?"

"Oh you know, the old conspiracy theory that he was working for - actually, the FBI - but then faked his death and went into WITSEC. I wonder if I can persuade Abbott to give me the skinny on that, since I have all this fancy security clearance now."

"I don't know what the hell to say to that, man."

"Focus! Cho, Rigsby, you two and Grace were running the investigation while the two of us were still in Malibu after the explosion. What do you remember?"

"I took point, since it was an explosion - we figured out that the incendiary device was small but military grade, worked out its point of origin near the middle of the room. We figured one of them brought it in on their person, since Jane obviously didn't set it."

Cho nods. "There wasn't much left, so forensics got only spot DNA from the remains. Confirmed with medical records on file."

Lisbon huffs forcefully and slaps her open palm onto the table. "Damn it! I went in after Jane almost immediately - I remember seeing Ray's body laying there. He had a burn on part of his face, but I could identify him by sight - there was a _lot_ more there than just spot DNA. He and McAllister must have switched things out when I went into the other room and got sidetracked by Reede Smith. I should have caught this long ago!"

"I was pretty out of it, but if I remember correctly, Lisbon, you were kind of busy making sure Bertram didn't kill me in that hospital. I'm very grateful, by the way."

She ignores him. "I spent two years feeling so guilty about having convinced Haffner to meet with you that day. I felt like I sent an innocent man to his death! But I guess you were right about him all along. I should have caught it!"

Cho drops a hand on her shoulder. "It wasn't your fault. None of us saw this."

Rigsby nods. "I don't blame you. But what now? How does this help?"

Jane frowns, thoughtful. "Actually, Rigsby, I think you had the right idea earlier. We never established the connection between Red John and Visualize in the past, but maybe that connection _was_ Ray Haffner, and pulling that thread will help us find him, I'm almost sure of it. What we heard from that priest never quite made sense - he said he saw some _kid_ painting the face."

"So?"

"So, I figured that he was misremembering, or that 'kid' could have meant anyone under thirty. But McAllister was well into his mid-thirties by '88."

"Ray was 20 or 21 at the time. I remember now, he kept interrupting that case to ask me to leave the CBI and join his agency. And he knew too much about our investigation - that's how we found out he was Visualize in the first place. Plus, he evaded the question when I asked if he'd been at the farm that year." Lisbon scrubs a hand over her forehead with a frown, wishing she hadn't spent time in the last two years silently regretting what she thought she'd done to him.

"You're saying he could have painted the first Red John smiley face and killed those people."

Jane half-shrugs. "I think he could have painted the face, but it's more likely that McAllister killed them. But everyone connected to the case is either dead or senile, so we can't ask."

"What about his connection to Blake?" Lisbon asks. "What Grace and Wylie uncovered makes it look like he was pretty high up since he was sending communiqués of some kind, but he didn't have the tattoo."

Cho cuts in. "He could have been running the show. He was charming, sociable. Even when he tried to get me to spy on Jane and the team while Lisbon was out. Seemed well read too, more than McAllister. There are gangs whose leaders have no tattoos at all, though usually tied to mafia."

"You're right, I remember reading about that when I was in Washington. And it looked like the three dots for Blake wasn't original - apparently in French prisons it means something along the lines of 'death to cops'. Made sense they infiltrated law enforcement."

Rigsby runs a hand through his short hair, agitated. "This is crazy. This sounds totally crazy. It sounds like Haffner was behind all of it - Blake, Red John, everything? And now he has my wife!"

"No," Jane shakes his head, firm. "No, McAllister was still Red John, he was still the serial killer who murdered my family. Haffner was the kind of man who needs someone to give him orders, the kind of dependent personality that gets sucked into cults. Though I think Cho's right, maybe he was running Red John's network behind the scenes - McAllister wouldn't have had the time to do both, nor was he charming enough to make it happen. And if we're right, this is great news. He's skilled, capable, but generally dependent on someone else to make plans - he has Grace, but I'm willing to bet he has _no idea_ what to do with her. Probably has her locked up somewhere while he tries to figure it out."

Cho raises his eyebrows as a thought dawns on him. "Jane. You know what this means?"

"I suspect you're about to tell us."

"Your list. The last five men were Blake Association's top brass, Red John, and Stiles. That's a hell of a guess."

"Oh. Well I didn't know they were Blake when I narrowed it down - but thank you."

"So how do we find them?"

"I should be able to set up some facial recognition programs to look for any signs of Haffner on the night Ms Van Pelt went missing now that we know who to look for," Wylie offers. "Agent Lisbon, you mentioned something about a burn on half his face?"

"Yeah. I'll talk to one of the sketch artists to update the image. In the mean time, Cho and Rigsby, I want you to get in contact with whatever is left of Visualize and get their records on Haffner and of any properties they own that are in the Southwest. He couldn't have taken her all the way back to California, because he came back the next night for Culpepper, but check anywhere less than a day's drive. Jane, once I finish with the artist, you and I are going to go to Bastrop and see what we can turn up. He had to have left something."

Jane turns an amused smirk on her. "Okay boss." He chuckles a little at the irony of using the same words she'd used on him less than a week ago.

"Oh- sorry Cho! Force of habit."

Cho just huffs a laugh and lifts one hand as if to say 'carry on'.

Wylie turns to him as they start to go their separate ways. "What if Elvis _is_ alive?"

**FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION, BASTROP, TX**

Jane is a little surprised that the cell Culpepper had been killed in is still empty. Despite it being a crime scene, he'd expected that they'd have shuffled new prisoners in already given the state of prison overcrowding in Texas. Empty cells are a rare sight to see.

Lisbon lets him go in first, and then hangs back near the door, doing her best to question the guard on duty over the jeering of prisoners in neighboring cells. Several of them call out entreaties, insisting on their innocence.

Jane shuts out all the noise, including the cadence of Lisbon's conversation, and focuses his attention on the room.

Ray Haffner is certainly more charming and sociable than McAllister ever was, but what he makes up in social skills surely meant slightly fewer sociopathic tendencies. He is less methodical and more emotional, more messy; he'd already seemed a little on edge the last time Jane saw him, and the end of Blake must have tipped him over that edge. The roughly drawn smiley face is proof enough. Unlike Red John, Haffner had to have left _something_ behind at the scenes.

Jane just has to figure out what it is.

Plus, he seriously doubts that Haffner has any forensic techs left capable of wiping away and hiding evidence now that Blake was gone. McAllister had people like Brett Partridge around to hide away even minuscule traces, and aside from the Carter Peake situation, that had always been the case during his reign as California's most prolific serial killer. It was what had made him so hard to track down.

Culpepper's blood is dry on the whitewashed concrete wall. The face continues to grin dully, no longer fresh and shining. Its left eye is a large smear. Jane wonders if the open eye is of dual meaning, given Lisbon's revelation about the burn Haffner suffered the last time they saw him. Burn would mean scarring preventing the right eye from opening all the way, just like the one on the wall. A self portrait _and_ a declaration of continued cult membership.

He looks away.

And spots it.

Culpepper had been on the top bunk despite being alone in the cell, a position both slightly less claustrophobic than the bottom and that had the advantage of slightly more privacy from the hallway - guards wanting to check in would have to come closer to the door and look up to see him.

It also meant that Haffner would have had to climb the bunk's ladder to get to Culpepper.

There is a spot of mud dried on the corner of the third rung from the bottom.

"Lisbon!"

**AUSTIN, TX**

Cho and Rigsby have considerably less luck than Jane. They learn that Brother Jason Cooper is still at the head of the failing cult, and he is as uncooperative as ever.

Still, he agrees to come in to have a conversation, claiming that neither he nor the members of his religion had anything to hide. Though he does make it a point to cite religious freedom from prosecution, his ire at being questioned evident even over the phone.

When he finally arrives, he looks the same as always, large glasses magnifying a placid and thoroughly unhelpful expression.

"Jason Cooper," Cho says. "You aren't a suspect at this time. We're just looking for some information."

"We've grown quite accustomed to being accused by your team, Agent Cho. Though usually it's Agent Lisbon and Patrick Jane harassing us. We'd _so_ hoped to see the last of this persecution when you left California."

Cho sighs. "Look. I'll get to the point. Our friend Grace Van Pelt was taken, and we suspect Ray Haffner. He was a member of Visualize, and has been leaving behind faces drawn in blood with what we suspect is the Visualize logo for the left eye."

"If you're asking if we sanctioned any such activities, the answer is no. Brother Stiles - may he ascend and transcend with peace - was quite taken with Ms Van Pelt. She was far more open minded than the rest of your team. Neither he nor I would have seen her hurt." Cooper talks with his hands, his body language open and free.

"We need your records on Haffner and any property records you have that can help us."

"I'm afraid I cannot release such information to you, Agent Cho. Religious records _are_ protected under the law. Unless you have a warrant?"

Cho says nothing, and that is answer enough for Cooper, who draws himself up.

"It seems you don't have real evidence at all of any Visualize involvement, do you? As always, you threaten with conjecture. I trust you'll have an excellent day, Agent Cho. I cannot help you, but I do hope you'll find your missing friend."

He nods at Cho and exits the room, pausing when Jane nearly bowls him over in the hallway.

"Cooper. You know me, and you know what I am capable of. So if you have anything that could help us find Grace Van Pelt and don't tell us, I am going to come after you. Look at me - I mean it. You can see that, can't you?"

"Excuse me! Mr. Jane, you are responsible for the death of Brother Stiles - may he ascend and transcend with peace - and I will certainly not entreat with a murderer such as yourself. The law protects our-"

"Don't you worry about the law, _Brother_ Cooper. You need to worry about me. If _anything_ happens to our friend that you could have prevented by telling us what you know, I will find you, and I will make you sorry. You know I can."

"Jane! That's enough!" Abbott appears out of the observation room and grabs hold of his arm.

But Jane shakes him off and points a finger into Cooper's face. "The thing you don't understand about me, Cooper, is that I've been playing with the house money for years, and if I have to go to prison, I don't care. I _will_ find her. Regardless of what I'll have to do."

"Jane!" Abbott pulls him away from Cooper, passing on apologies as Cooper walks away, shaken.

"What in the hell were you doing?"

By this point, they have the audience of their whole team, including an irate Lisbon. Jane's eyes flicker over to Rigsby before coming back to face Abbott. His voice is completely calm when he speaks.

"The unexpected. We need Cooper out of his comfort zone if he'll ever give anything up." He sighs.

"The mud I found in Culpepper's cell matches some that I saw on the stairs leading up to the motel room, though I didn't realize it was significant until I was in the cell. That was _my_ mistake. But waiting for the lab to analyze it and process it as evidence will take time. Time we don't have."

"Okay. We both know how important this is. And we both know that I give you a lot of latitude here, bury my head in the sand instead of asking questions I _know_ I should ask. But you just threatened a religious leader who _isn't even a suspect_. On video. He is going to string you up in court! This could be a federal lawsuit!"

Abbott turns to Fischer. "Go, talk him down if you can. Offer him some coffee, buy his lunch, pay for his car service to the airport. Whatever he needs. We'll put a rush on the lab, follow the evidence."

She nods and leaves, and Jane takes the momentary distraction to stalk off in the other direction. Rigsby slips out of the observation room to follow him.

"Thanks for trying, Jane."

"You have a dark coat in your luggage, Rigsby?"

"What?"

Jane smiles like the sun. "Come on."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little humor this chapter to start, but you should know that when writing this I nearly ended up in a deep rabbit hole of Elvis conspiracy theories. There's a whole TIME article about it, and it mentions one woman's theory (with what she claims is evidence!) that he was undercover with the FBI to take down some mob? But they found out and so he was put into Witness Protection. Who knows! Maybe nobody died in the explosion, and Brett Stiles is currently partying it up with Elvis somewhere anonymous in middle America. Maybe Tupac is there too.
> 
> Jane has been relatively...sane so far along, especially with Lisbon - at this point he gets to go off the rails again, now that he has a scent to follow. He hasn't turned into a normal person all of a sudden - that would be mature and not very Jane-like!
> 
> Also - when Cho says "none of us saw this," he's technically wrong. Remember, Lisbon saw Ray Haffner in her nightmare, scar and all! Her subconscious was trying to figure this out (and the nightmare wasn't there only to open the door for a little emotional honesty from Jane). I think some of you caught this while reading!
> 
> Stay tuned for the next (penultimate) chapter: finally, the rescue!


	14. Truth or Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jason Cooper suspects nothing until Jane turns the car away from the airport, pulling over and rolling the partition down to smile back with all his teeth at their protesting charge.

**AUSTIN, TX**

Oscar Monroe is sure that he'd been called in that morning to pick up a passenger from the Austin FBI office and drive him to the airport, but for reasons he can't seem to remember, he's sitting in his kitchen in his fancy uniform shirt and slacks. He has no idea what happened to his jacket or his hat, but a ticket stub in his pocket tells him that he'd taken the bus home around the time of the pickup. He finds that trying to remember what happened makes him feel sleepy, so he elects to take a nap and refuses to worry about it for the rest of the day.

* * *

It was child's play, really, getting the driver to do what he already clearly wanted to do. Jane isn't even sure he'd put the man under at all, let alone hypnotized him - just the light suggestion had sent him on his way to take the rest of the day off and relax.

Jason Cooper suspects nothing until Jane turns the car away from the airport, pulling over and rolling the partition down to smile back with all his teeth at their protesting charge.

Cooper gapes at him, and then looks to Rigsby in the passenger seat, as if expecting him to be reasonable. Rigsby doesn't budge.

"Help me find my wife," he says, voice low, dangerous.

"You see, Cooper, Visualize's party line is just not enough when someone we love is in danger. Now, tell us what we need to know and we'll let you go. No muss, no fuss."

But Cooper is obstinate and refuses, instead nattering away about being abducted and the charges he was planning to have filed.

Jane cuts into the tirade. "You'll crack eventually. In the mean time, I found mud where Haffner killed Culpepper, which suggests he's got her somewhere near water, which leaves either the coast or the Rio Grande. What do you think, Cooper?"

Cooper just folds his arms and sits back against the leather seat.

"Well, there was no trace of sand anywhere that I could see, so I'm guessing the river. Ah, excellent, you think so too."

They speed off in the direction of the I-10. Both Jane's and Rigsby's phones begin to ring as their team members notice their disappearance, and both smoothly turn off their devices and stuff them in the glove compartment. Rigsby takes Cooper's and throws it out the window.

The missed calls accumulate.

Cooper tries protesting again, but Rigsby just shoots him a threatening glare.

Jane cheerfully reminds Cooper, "I'm not armed, but my friend Rigsby here is, and it's his wife who was taken. It won't be in my power to stop him from doing anything you won't like, Jason. And," he points out, grinning in the rearview mirror, "you have no way of calling for help."

Then, suddenly feeling a little diabolical, he fiddles with the radio while noting Cooper's microexpressions until he lands on a station that provokes distaste. He turns it up and promptly closes the partition as if to lock the insipid noises in the back. The station seems to repeat the same handful of songs every so often, interspersed with loud advertisements that are even more repetitive.

It takes until the eighth rendition of the same twangy jangling about beer for Cooper to finally give in, knocking on the partition with a deep moue of irritation.

Jane only had to make a couple of vaguely threatening comments, and Rigsby didn't even have to pull his weapon - as far as kidnappings go, he thinks, this one had been nearly amicable.

"Truth or Consequences," Cooper says with a sigh as soon as the radio is blessedly turned off.

"What?"

"Truth or Consequences. The Church used to have a resort there for health retreats, but we had to close its doors over a year ago after we lost membership. It was next to Ralph Edwards park, and Brother Haffner visited the healing waters frequently in the past. _If_ he is alive as you think, that's where he'll be."

Rigsby turns to look at Jane, confused, but Jane just smiles and exits towards El Paso. Cooper doesn't say anything further. Jane lets the silence stretch for a moment longer until he speaks, just to draw out the suspense. It'd been a long drive, after all. He has to take entertainment where he can get it.

"It's a town in New Mexico on the banks of the Rio Grande. The story is that they renamed it because of some game show back in the fifties, but I always thought it sounded more like a name a cult would choose."

"How do you know about it?"

Jane shrugs. "Eh. I used to look at maps when we were traveling back in the circuit. We rarely had any stops in the Southwest, but sometimes we had-" he pauses, trying to choose a word better than _marks_. "-Clients who traveled to see us. Came in handy to know the geography when I had a longer stint in Vegas back in the day, actually."

"Mr. Jane, I've told you everything I know. Are you still planning on keeping me locked up in this vehicle?"

"'Course not. You've been very helpful, Brother Cooper. A location is really all I wanted." He chuckles, and then says, almost gleefully, "See? You had to tell the truth, or face the consequences!"

Cooper does not smile and Rigsby just raises his eyebrows, so Jane clears his throat and continues. "I'll even leave you in town here, though you'll have to find your own way to the airport I'm afraid."

Cooper is left gaping after them on a sunny sidewalk in El Paso as they take a hard right north towards New Mexico. He will have a particularly grating melody stuck in his head for days.

Once they're speeding along the highway again with Rigsby behind the wheel, Jane sighs and turns his phone on, wincing when he sees the number of calls he's missed. There's even one from Wylie.

He hits one on the speed dial and doesn't even have to wait a full ring before she picks up, furious. He lets her shout at him for a minute knowing she needs to let the steam out, and then interrupts.

"I'm sorry Lisbon! Look, we got a location, and we didn't want to put yours or Cho's jobs at risk by telling you what we were doing! And besides - you were upset with me for insisting on the FBI offering you the job, and I really didn't want to be the reason you lost it too. You should have the choice about whether or not you get to keep your job. I didn't tell you _because_ I was thinking of you!"

Her resulting yell is so loud that he cringes, holding the phone away from his ear. Rigsby just raises his eyebrows and grimaces in sympathy.

As it turns out, the mud Jane had found in the cell had an unusually high concentration of chlorine in it, apparently specific to Sierra County and to the water from hot springs in the area around Truth or Consequences. The sample taken from the outdoor staircase at the motel matched too.

This time, Lisbon is none too pleased to be reaching the same conclusions as Jane despite their different methods. But she barks out orders anyway when he gives her the address, and he can hear the loud _whap-whap_ of chopper blades already going in the background. They'll arrive soon after he and Rigsby do.

She promises to kill him when she sees him, unswayed by his rationalizations.

**TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, NEW MEXICO**

Jane follows Rigsby as they exit the car and make for the squat little building, sweating into his collar under the heat of the sun. The air feels strange, crackling the way that only happens in small desert towns before a storm. The building itself is in a similar condition to everything around it - reasonably maintained, but with paint cracked and peeling a little in the September heat. The front yard is clearly designed with aesthetics in mind, large flat stepping stones leading the way to the front entrance from the sidewalk. The effect is somewhat marred by the copious mud around the stones, squelchy from the combined effect of the bubbling aquifers below and the wetness of the area's summer "monsoon."

Jane hops across the stones quickly, doing his best to keep his beloved brown shoes away from the grabbing mud. One step then two, three, and four up to the wraparound porch that is framed by flowering cacti, and then he and Rigsby are at the front door. Rigsby's gun is drawn, sweat beading at his brow. He motions with his chin, and Jane sidesteps away, leaving it clear.

The wood around the handle and lock splinters like toothpicks under the force of Rigsby's kick, and the door slams open and into the wall loudly, the noise echoing into the empty street. After a few moments to sweep the room, Rigsby drops his chin in a nod - area is clear - and Jane follows him into some sort of lobby or reception area.

On the left there are low chairs and coffee tables next to what looks like a large, dried out fountain and a little copse of tall indoor plants that look decidedly brittle and drooping due to neglect. On the other side of the room is a counter replete with sagging brochures and a sign proclaiming hot spring activation every fifteen minutes. The wall behind it has been taken over by a large tourist map of the town, little cartoony drawings representing places of interest. There's a stylized eye at their location near the park. The town's odd name is emblazoned across the top of the map, and a larger eye forms the logo just below. Jane wonders vaguely when Visualize purchased the area, though it is unsurprising that they should be influential in a town whose claim to fame is "healing waters."

The door to the left of the counter is ajar, rattling back and forth in the slight breeze, and they assume it leads outside to the porch. Everything is covered with dust, though there is a clear swatch in the middle of the floor leading further into the building where something - most likely Grace herself - had been dragged. There are also foot prints all over the tiled floors that seem to go back and forth and in no particular direction at all, like those of a man pacing. The freshest ones lead to the open side door.

The wind kicks up, and Jane is sure he hears the beating of helicopter blades. Cavalry's arriving.

By silent agreement, Rigsby and Jane ignore the fresh tracks and focus on the wider trail, choosing to find Grace first instead of giving chase. Rigsby follows it until it disappears where the tiles give way to plush carpeting that absorbs the dust. Tentatively, he tries the door on the right, which turns out to be a drafty, empty cloak room. The door on the left opens into what looks like an eating area that is nearly haunting in its emptiness, tablecloths swaying a little in the eddies of air. The final door at the end of the hallway leads to a staircase, and there's a sign next to it in brass lettering proclaiming it to be the direction of the famous hot springs and massage rooms.

Rigsby heads down while Jane hangs back, wanting to inspect the dining area further and to give his friends a moment's privacy for their reunion before the rest of the team arrive to help. He suspects that Haffner had made a run for it through the side door at the first sign of their approach, leaving Grace down there alone. He's gratified when a moment later, he hears Rigsby's relieved voice.

"Grace! You're here! Oh, you're okay, I'm here. I'm here."

Jane hears footsteps behind him and smiles without turning, still peering at the silverware laid out on a table near the door. "They're downstairs, sounds like Rigs just found her."

"That's really too bad."

He barely has the time to register that the voice did not belong to any of his teammates when he hears a shot ring out. And then two more follow it in quick succession. There's an awful, burning pain in his left flank. He really, really hates guns. He brings his hand up to his side and it's very, very wet.

"Jane!"

He turns, staggering, and watches as Raymond Haffner falls to his knees, dropping his weapon and clutching at his gut and his thigh, revealing Lisbon standing behind him, gun drawn.

"Jane!"

She pushes past Haffner and rushes to him as he feels himself toppling over, and she's quick enough to catch him and lower him down slowly. It still hurts like hell.

"I've got you Jane, you're okay."

"Heh. Trust fall," he says. "You caught me." There's an uncomfortable, wet sensation at the bottom of his chest, and he struggles to draw air in.

"Of course I did. Look, the team's here. Just hang on, Jane."

There's another loud noise - a single shot from somewhere below.

"Rigsby found her…" he rasps. "Downstairs." He feels a little lightheaded.

Lisbon's hands find the wound in his side and press hard, trying to stop the blood. There's so much of it, too much. It hurts, and Jane finds himself fighting unconsciousness.

Cho enters the building and stops short when he sees the three of them. Barely missing a beat to assess, he snaps cuffs on Haffner and tucks the fallen gun into his own waistband, then races downstairs at Lisbon's direction, heading for Rigsby and Grace.

"Jane! Jane, stay with me." She uses her free hand to push his hair back from his damp forehead and meets his eyes.

"Lisbon…" He raises a hand - with great effort, why is it taking so much effort? - and lays it on her cheek. He doesn't like seeing her look so anguished.

"Medic! Where are those damn medics?"

"Teresa…"

She focuses on him again, every trace of her anger over the phone gone. She leans into his palm.

"Jane, what you said when you told me about your nightmares. You can't leave me either. It goes both ways, okay? You hear me Jane? You're going to have to be fine, because I know what you meant and I- I feel the same way."

Her hand leaves his forehead to cover his own against her cheek. Her other hand is still pressing hard into his side, and her eyes are wide and worried.

"Well that's lucky…" He chuckles, and it comes out like a cough, and he _really_ can't breathe now. His lungs feel like they're full of liquid instead of air.

"Only you… would make a man who's been shot… feel like the luckiest in the world."

He doesn't hear her response.

**LAS CRUCES, NEW MEXICO, MOUNTAINVIEW REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER**

The beeping is steady but annoying, worming its way into dreams and nightmares and thoughts alike. The people who work in the hospital largely don't hear it, their brains filtering it out as background noise unless it changes tempo and urgency. The patients can't help but hear it even in sleep, and their loved ones can often be found at bedsides relieved to be hearing it continuously and praying it won't stop.

Grace opens her eyes, blinking into the fluorescent blandness around her. She sighs, relieved that the headache that had plagued her for the last few days seems to have lessened in intensity, though her skin still feels a little raw in all the places she'd been cut and stitched back together. The sensation is thankfully muffled by whatever painkillers they have her on. With faint amusement, she thinks she probably looks like the rag doll from one of the halloween movies she'd loved as a child. Red hair and stitches. She'll have some scars, probably, though the plastic surgeon who had assessed her seemed to be optimistic that they'd at least partially fade with time.

She turns her head and smiles a little when she sees her husband slumped over and asleep in the chair next to her bed, one of his hands stretched out to clasp hers even in sleep. The desperation in his eyes when he'd found her and shot off the chain shackling her to the wall had been startling; he'd always been a calm and easygoing man. But she guesses she'd have been the same way if he'd been the one missing. She thinks briefly of letting him rest, the circles under his eyes deep and almost purple like bruises, but she knows that he'd prefer to know as soon as she woke.

"Hey," she says softly, and tugs gently on his arm.

He startles, but comes awake immediately, and a relieved smile spreads across his cheeks. "You're awake!"

"I am. You look terrible, you know." She gestures at his rumpled appearance, fond.

He rubs the back of his head a little sheepishly, but squeezes her hand. "Yeah, been a little worried."

"Only a little?" She teases.

"Oh you know, come back to the motel from a night out to find my wife gone… what's a guy to think?"

"Wayne!"

He laughs, and presses a kiss to her hand. "I love you babe. I'm glad we found you."

"I love you too."

After a moment, her smile dims. "How's Jane? I was a little out of it when we came up those stairs, but he looked like he'd been shot. Bad."

"Last I heard, he was still in surgery. Apparently the bullet hit his spleen and he lost a ton of blood; they weren't totally sure he'd make it. Lisbon wanted to stay and wait, but she and Cho had to go clean things up. Jane and I uh, didn't exactly follow protocol to find you."

"Oh Wayne…"

"I know."

He smiles faintly, remembering something. "I um, told him what we thought about them, you know, getting together." His face falls. "And then we came back and found you gone."

She strokes her thumb on the back of his hand. "Yeah, well you found me again. I can't believe you told him though! What did he say?"

He shrugs, amused that she is more interested in that than the fact that she is in the hospital. "He didn't really say anything. Looked like maybe he was thinking about it though."

"Hmm." She sighs. "Poor Lisbon. He better make it, I don't think she'll forgive him if he leaves her behind again."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dithered over that non-confession between J/L for ages because it's a cliché, but then I remembered that the show gave us a whole cheesy airport/airplane confession like in a soap opera and 90s hollywood - so really. there's little that would be too over the top and cheesy between Jane and Lisbon. Besides, it's not like I'm going to write TM fic where those two aren't best friends in love, am I.
> 
> Also I had no clue where Haffner had taken Grace, not until I was scrolling around on google maps looking for somewhere that wouldn't be too far from Austin while writing this chapter. I saw Truth or Consequences on the map and just couldn't resist. That there was a special geographically identifying factor in the dirt near the (very real!) high chlorine hot springs and "healing waters" was the cherry on top, and exactly the weird kind of detail Jane would invariably pick up on. And evidence that Lisbon could follow, just like in chapter 1! Anyway - sorry if you're reading this and you live there, I am not implying you're part of some creepy cult!


	15. A Much More Entertaining Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some wrapping up, some summarizing in the form of a convenient debrief (most of it was pieced together in earlier chapters, but I've always secretly liked when we get the nice tidy wrap up at the ends of eps in procedural shows), and of course, some flirting. I wrote the ending before the bulk of the last two chapters, and I like the idea of ending this fic how it started; within the show's timeline. With some little deviations, of course!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, bearing with my random update schedule, and most of all for your support. I wrote most of these thirty thousand words in the span of... a week? but this has also been the first longer/plot driven fic I've ever actually finished, and the first I have attempted to even write in over ten years. I enjoyed the journey though - and I hope you did too. Thank you for making it with me.

**AUSTIN, TX ONE WEEK LATER**

Little Madeline Rigsby toddles around the bullpen, charming the socks off every person she meets, but by far the person most turned to mush is, to everyone's surprise, Kimball Cho. They see his dimple more in one hour than most of them have seen in the whole time they've known him, and he looks completely and unabashedly delighted as he plays with her.

Her brother Ben is older, calmer, and has taken up residence in Jane's empty spot on the couch, surrounded by toys and reading a picture book while kicking his feet back and forth. His eyes are huge and happy behind his glasses when Fischer sits next to him, and he chatters away to her about Ferdinand the bull.

Grace and Wayne are debriefing with Abbott on behalf of the team, and together, they fill in all the remaining pieces of everything that had transpired. She sits stiffly, gingerly, careful not to slouch or stretch too much to avoid pulling at wounds that are still healing.

This is the story they tell, worked out by the team and from what Haffner had admitted to Grace:

In '88, Haffner and McAllister met at Elliston Farm, and probably bonded over surviving Visualize's grueling hours and hard work of farm labor - with McAllister a little over ten years older, it was likely that he'd been something of a mentor figure. Ray Haffner had just graduated from college, fresh with the fervor of a thesis on William Blake (Cho skimmed it when Wylie dug it up, and then tossed it aside in disgust barely a few paragraphs in). He was also already thoroughly taken with Visualize's ideas about self-actualization, and, as Jane had surmised, a bit of a dependent personality, though perfectly capable of presenting a normal face to the world most of the time. McAllister was less academic, set in his ways and the retribution he felt he was owed for whatever life had dealt him. For unknown reasons, McAllister killed two people and dumped them in the barn; Haffner had almost certainly been the one who painted the face like a grave marker: the true smile the victims could never smile again.

Later on, when McAllister killed the Peakes - at the count of 4 officially a serial killer - it was Haffner who helped him hide the husband's body, and McAllister saw the value in a network to do his bidding. He likely "officially" started the Association later to hide his kills, but he left Haffner to handle the details - and recruitment out of Visualize. Some followers were bought or blackmailed (like Reede Smith), others came with admiration (Brett Partridge), but all were turned deeply to his cause by the time he was finished with them. They were prolific - and hidden from view. Most communications were done through phone calls to burners, but within the CBI they'd used emails like distress calls when a high level member was in trouble, symbols hidden in plain sight so less tech savvy members could access them but that prying eyes couldn't easily decode.

Like McAllister, Haffner hated Jane, and he hated the team - with the exception of Lisbon, who he'd seen as a bystander in the plot that ousted him from the SCU. He'd tried to recruit her, and then tried to pursue her, growing frustrated by her rebuffs. And then she'd persuaded him to go to Malibu, and he'd been flattered and panicked that he'd been mistaken for the man he looked up to so much.

He got caught at the edge of the blast zone of the bomb McAllister had planted when he'd gone back to attempt to rescue Stiles, earning a scar in the process. The Association switched their medical records and planted spot DNA to fake their deaths.

But then, Jane had gotten McAllister. And then they'd all picked off the Blake Association one by one, leaving Haffner alone with no one to look up to and no one to rely on. Even Visualize was in chaos, its leader dead and many members Haffner had recruited locked up as part of the Association takedown. He'd already seemed a little fragile and a little frantic during the last conversation Lisbon had had with him before the bomb, and once he was alone, they suspected he snapped. Like a cornered animal, he'd lashed out, initially hoping to take Lisbon since he'd fixated on her before. But when Grace when found and turned off the bugs he'd set to keep an eye on the investigation, he turned his attention on her, impressed with her work. Recalling that both McAllister and Stiles - the two people he once looked up to most in the world - had both liked her, he'd decided to make her his crowning achievement. But as Jane had surmised, he was acting on instinct, no plan in sight. Once he'd kidnapped Grace, it didn't seem like he knew what to do next without the direction of someone to mastermind. Grace suspected he couldn't decide whether he wanted to kill her or somehow make her "his." The indecision had given them the time they needed to find her; she's sure that he'd have been perfectly capable of killing her if he'd decided to - and that after her escape attempt, he was getting there.

The FBI threw the book at him, levying charges of conspiracy, premeditated murder one, kidnapping, attempted murder, fraud, obstruction, and so on. Homeland had even stepped in, Kirkland's old partner digging up Kirkland's meticulous Blake notes that tangentially implicated Haffner in various major and minor crimes going back nearly thirty years.

But it was their little team of five that had both first discovered the existence of the Blake Association and finally, conclusively, closed the case.

Abbott immediately offers them both positions as agents, following as much time off as they wanted. Wayne looks at Grace, who turns and looks through the glass walls to see Cho bouncing Maddy and Ben laughing with Wylie and Fischer. She smiles.

**LAS CRUCES, NM, MOUNTAINVIEW REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER**

Jane makes it through surgery, coming out of it poorer one spleen and richer multiple vaccinations. He feels a little bit like a pincushion. An elated pincushion even despite his long documented dislike for doctors though, because Lisbon had come back from talking Cooper off the ledge before he'd woken up. And then she stays in New Mexico - ostensibly to wrap up the investigation, secure Haffner's arrest and treatment, submit her reports on why she'd fired her weapon and so on. They both know she really stays so she can visit with Jane in the hospital until his discharge.

She teases him about being the damsel in distress with the lengthy hospital stay - longer than Van Pelt's, whose injuries were largely superficial and metabolic despite having been the one kidnapped.

On the third day after he first wakes in the hospital, she bustles in and adds a cup of tea to his hospital-mandated breakfast tray. He immediately takes a grateful sip, and it is so perfectly made that he blissfully, casually, blurts out "Lisbon, I love you."

They both freeze for a second, now that the words are between them a second time, no guns and no danger in sight. But he doesn't retract it, and she doesn't ask him to clarify. She only pinks a little, casting her eyes briefly heavenward before hiding her wide smile in a sip of her own coffee. He meets her gaze steadily over the rims of their paper cups, already trying to think of more conversations in which to casually say it again. The first time had been in the middle of a plot to catch Red John, and he'd been running on too much fear and adrenaline to appreciate just how much he liked saying it. Not this time.

A few days later, Lisbon drives him home, and he fills the day's drive with inane chatter, a little amused bickering, and some prime napping. They're both flushed and happy by the time they reach Austin city limits at dusk, windows down and hair mussed and feeling like they'd regained their easy, precious friendship along the way to saving Grace. Though really, they've regained their whole makeshift family too, and both make plans to try to convince Grace and Wayne to stay.

Around midday the day they get back to work, Jane's lounging around the bullpen and waiting for Lisbon to emerge from Abbott's office when a commotion begins. Several unfamiliar agents march out of the elevator, boxes in hand and followed by a woman marked with grief. He watches them as they pass through, eventually learning that they're the art squad and are working out of the conference room until their floor remodel is complete.

Intrigued, he worms his way in, offering gentle words to the widow - surprising even himself when he finds he means them - and picking up the right information as it drops from the mouths of various agents.

Hm. Fine art theft. Could be an interesting change of pace. He takes it to Fischer, who takes it to Abbott. Jane throws Lisbon a cheeky little grin as she listens in.

Fischer and Abbott are initially reluctant to step on the art squad's toes, and Abbott asks him flatly, "what do you know about catching art thieves?"

"Uh, nothing at all. That's why it'll be fun!"

Fischer rolls her eyes, smiling, already resigned. Abbott doesn't even bother continuing his token resistance, and Jane knows he's been forgiven for his stunt with Cooper thanks to Lisbon's interference. Agent Marcus Pike is attached to their team and leading the briefing five minutes later.

Jane catches Lisbon's eye as she wanders in with fresh coffee, and smiles like the sun before interrupting plans for what sounds like a dreadful and dull sting operation.

He tosses the file aside with a flourish. "My plan is a little more elaborate, but it's much more entertaining."

She grins back.

Cho huffs a laugh. "Of course it is."

Later, he's dawdling over the finer details of his plan and refreshing his tea in the break room when he hears her sure little footsteps behind him.

"Jane," she says, and he can already hear her exasperated amusement in just the one syllable. It's one of the many ways he's catalogued of her saying his name over the years, but it's also one of his favorites. That particular tone always meant that she'd already agreed to one of his plans - and better yet, was in a teasing mood. Some of his favorite memories of car rides and conversations at the CBI included that tone.

"What is it, my dear Lisbon?"

"Is this op supposed to be a practice run?"

"Whatever for?" He drops his tea bag into the trash.

"Asking me out for real."

He's suddenly very glad the counter is just behind him, because when he turns to face her, she's wearing the pale blue dress he'd selected and her hands are on her hips. Somehow that posture only emphasizes her legs, and he thinks he starts to feel a bit weak about the knees. Maybe he's not so recovered from his stint in New Mexico after all.

"Absolutely not," he manages, while surreptitiously leaning his weight into the counter.

He's surprised to find his own voice sounding mostly normal. "No, it isn't a practice run, because I'm going to do that right now."

"Oh yeah?" She's smiling now, eyebrows raised and teasing as she steps closer.

He swallows. "Yeah."

"Okay."


End file.
